Cortical activation pattern during shoulder simple versus vibration exercises： a functional near infrared spectroscopy study

To date, the cortical effect of exercise has not been fully elucidated. Using the functional near infrared spectroscopy, we attempted to compare the cortical effect between shoulder vibration exercise and shoulder simple exercise. Eight healthy subjects were recruited for this study. Two different exercise tasks（shoulder vibration exercise using the flexible pole and shoulder simple exercise） were performed using a block paradigm. We measured the values of oxygenated hemoglobin in the four regions of interest： the primary sensory-motor cortex（SM1 total, arm somatotopy, and leg and trunk somatotopy）, the premotor cortex, the supplementary motor area, and the prefrontal cortex. During shoulder vibration exercise and shoulder simple exercise, cortical activation was observed in SM1（total, arm somatotopy, and leg and trunk somatotopy）, premotor cortex, supplementary motor area, and prefrontal cortex. Higher oxygenated hemoglobin values were also observed in the areas of arm somatotopy of SM1 compared with those of other regions of interest. However, no significant difference in the arm somatotopy of SM1 was observed between the two exercises. By contrast, in the leg and trunk somatotopy of SM1, shoulder vibration exercise led to a significantly higher oxy-hemoglobin value than shoulder simple exercise. These two exercises may result in cortical activation effects for the motor areas relevant to the shoulder exercise, especially in the arm somatotopy of SM1. However, shoulder vibration exercise has an additional cortical activation effect for the leg and trunk somatotopy of SM1.

Investigation.of human visual cortex responses to flickering light using functional near infrared spectroscopy and constrained ICA

The human visual sensitivity to the flickering light has been under investigation for decades.The finding of research in this area can contribute to the understanding of human visual system mechanism and visual disorders,and establishing diagnosis and treatment of diseases.The aim of this study is to investigate the ffects of the flickering light to the visual cortex by monitoring the hemodynamic responses of the brain with the functional near infrared spectrosoopy(ENIRS)method.Since the acquired fNIRS signals are afected by physiological factors and measurement artifacts,constrained independent component analysis(eICA)was applied to extract the actual fNIRS responses from the obtained data.The experimental results revealed significant changes(p<0.0001)of the hemodynamic responses of the visual cortex.from the baseline when the flickering stimulation was activated.With the uses of cICA,the contrast to noise ratio(CNR),reflecting the contrast of hemodynamic concentration between rest and task,became larger.This indicated the improvement of the NIRS signals when the noise was eliminated.In subsequent studies,statistical analysis was used to infer the correlation between the NIRS signals and the visual stimulus.We found that there was a slight decrease of the oxygenated hemoglobin con-centration(about 5.69%)over four frequencies when the modulation increased.However,the variations of oxy and deoxy-hemoglobin were not statistically significant.