Detailed evidence of cerebral hemoglobin oxygenation changes in response to motor cortical activation revealed by a continuous-wave spectrophotometer with 10-Hz temporal resolution

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Abstract
In the last four years near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has been used in cerebral functional activation studies to monitor changes in concentration of oxy-, deoxy- and total hemoglobin [(O2Hb), (HHb) and (tHb) respectively] in response to different stimuli. Previous studies were performed with a 1 - 2 Hz temporal resolution and a poor signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio. The aim of this study was to investigate the response of the motor cortex region during a finger opposition task in single subjects using a novel continuous wave NIRS instrument with enhanced temporal resolution and S/N ratio. Six subjects performed a sequential finger opposition task with the right hand (20 s duration; 2 Hz). The optodes were positioned over the left motor cortex region using an inter-optode distance of 3.5 cm. The high S/N ratio and 0.1 s sampling time allowed clear monitoring of (O2Hb) and (HHb) changes due to heart beat as well as to respiration. The contribution of the heart pulse to the total signal was less than 0.4%. As previously shown by others using pooled data, an increase of (O2Hb) during the activation accompanied by a decrease of (HHb) was found in most subjects for every activation cycle. Our approach provides a better insight into the underlying physiological mechanisms.

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