Nah-Infrarot-Spektroskopie in der Psychiatrie

Abstract

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a noninvasive optical method for in vivo measurement of regional brain tissue oxygenation. Light from the near-infrared spectrum can penetrate the skull and is mainly absorbed by oxyhaemoglobin (O(2)Hb) and desoxyhaemoglobin (HHb). From the amount of reflected near-infrared light in relation to the amount absorbed by brain tissue, regional changes in O(2)Hb and HHb concentrations can be calculated spectrophotometrically. It has been shown that NIRS is not only able to measure massive disturbances in cerebral blood circulation due to serious neurological diseases, but that it also is sensitive enough to assess task-specific patterns of activation in healthy subjects during circumscribed cognitive processes. Preliminary investigations indicate altered regional brain tissue oxygenation in psychiatric patients during cognitive activation tasks. The NIRS outmatches other functional imaging methods in that it has no side effects and is well tolerated by psychiatric patients. Furthermore, it can be applied quickly and easily. Thus, NIRS is a potential screening method in psychiatric settings, provided that robust parameters of reliable diagnostic and/or prognostic value can be developed for individual psychiatric illnesses. However, this will depend on broader application of the method combined with established neurophysiological procedures and functional imaging techniques in psychiatric research.

Brain activation in frontotemporal and Alzheimer’s dementia: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study

“…A multi-channel NIRS system (ETG-4000 Optical Topography System; Hitachi Medical Co., Japan) with a temporal resolution of 10 Hz was used for all measurements. Near-infrared light penetrates biological tissue including skin, bone, and cerebrospinal fluid, and is mostly absorbed by hemoglobin with different wavelengths (695 nm ± 20 nm and 830 nm ± 20 nm) for oxygenated (O 2 Hb) and deoxygenated hemoglobin (HHb) [34, 35]. Therefore, the measurement of the cortical change of O 2 Hb and HHb is possible.…”

Recovery of cortical functioning in abstinent alcohol-dependent patients: Prefrontal brain oxygenation during verbal fluency at different phases during withdrawal

“…Compared to fMRI, NIRS provides the advantages of being less restrictive (natural sitting posture without head fi xation, narrow environment and noise), less expensive, less sensitive to motion artifacts and highly accepted by participants. Therefore it is optimally suited for claustrophobic or elder participants (Herrmann et al 2008;Zeller et al 2010), psychiatric patients (Fallgatter et al 1997(Fallgatter et al , 2004Kubota et al 2005;Kameyama et al 2006;Schecklmann et al 2007Schecklmann et al , 2008b and children (Dresler et al 2009). The method has proven to be highly reliable (Plichta et al 2006Schecklmann et al 2008a); however, it comes at the cost of only being able to measure cortical structures.…”

Suppression of emotional words in the Think/No-Think paradigm investigated with functional near-infrared spectroscopy

“…Increases of O 2 Hb and tHb and a decrease of HHb as a consequence of neuronal activity in certain brain regions is described as neurovascular coupling and is the underlying principle in fMRI measurements investigating the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal (Logothetis and Wandell, 2004). Correlations of measurements acquired with fNIRS as compared with other functional imaging methods (Huppert et al, 2006;Kennan et al, 2002;Ohmae et al, 2006;Strangman et al, 2002) and moderate to high reliability indices (Plichta et al, 2006a(Plichta et al, ,b, 2007b, in addition to its fast, save and easy use (Fallgatter et al, 2004;Obrig et al, 2000;Strangman et al, 2002) justify the application of this methodology.…”