Test–retest reliability of the prefrontal response to affective pictures based on functional near-infrared spectroscopy

Abstract

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is being increasingly applied to affective and social neuroscience research; however, the reliability of this method is still unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the test–retest reliability of the fNIRS-based prefrontal response to emotional stimuli. Twenty-six participants viewed unpleasant and neutral pictures, and were simultaneously scanned by fNIRS in two sessions three weeks apart. The reproducibility of the prefrontal activation map was evaluated at three spatial scales (mapwise, clusterwise, and channelwise) at both the group and individual levels. The influence of the time interval was also explored and comparisons were made between longer (intersession) and shorter (intrasession) time intervals. The reliabilities of the activation map at the group level for the mapwise (up to 0.88, the highest value appeared in the intersession assessment) and clusterwise scales (up to 0.91, the highest appeared in the intrasession assessment) were acceptable, indicating that fNIRS may be a reliable tool for emotion studies, especially for a group analysis and under larger spatial scales. However, it should be noted that the individual-level and the channelwise fNIRS prefrontal responses were not sufficiently stable. Future studies should investigate which factors influence reliability, as well as the validity of fNIRS used in emotion studies.

Feasibility of Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to Investigate the Mirror Neuron System: An Experimental Study in a Real-Life Situation

“…Global components separated by ICA were removed. Then, we applied a second-order detrend, a discrete cosine transform-based high-pass filter (0.0078 Hz) and a low-pass filter based on the hemodynamic response function (HRF) ( Huang et al, 2017 ).…”

A systematic review of studies that used NIRS to measure neural activation during emotion processing in healthy individuals

“…Several different software packages have been developed to assist in the pre-processing and analysis of NIRS data, but most of these are either incomplete or adapted from other neuroimaging techniques. A study by Huang et al. (2017) analysed data using NIRS_SPM toolbox (BISP KAIST, Korea), a MATLAB-based software package that was initially designed for the statistical analysis of fMRI data and adapted for NIRS.…”

“…Finally, before NIRS can be considered for real-world applications, further research needs to examine the test–retest reliability to establish whether the outcomes are reliable over time or whether they are influenced by extraneous day-to-day factors, such as a participant’s mood or the amount of sleep they received during the prior night. Although some preliminary studies have found the test–retest reliability of NIRS in emotion processing to be acceptable at the group level for mapwise and clusterwise scales, further research is needed to gain better insight into the reliability of the method ( Huang et al. , 2017 ).…”

“…, 2017 ). Given that existing literature has reported inconsistent findings, it remains to be seen whether the stability of O 2 Hb signals is influenced by extraneous factors, such as the cognitive task, method of data processing and analysis, or the type of NIRS system and associated wavelengths ( Huang et al. , 2017 ).…”

“…, 2019 ), other studies have reported no significant changes in O 2 Hb concentrations when measured with NIRS ( Ateş et al. , 2017 ; Huang et al. , 2017 ; Lucas et al.…”