Topics

Find below the main topics for abstract submission. Further information regarding the abstract format and deadline to submit will follow soon.

TOPICS

TOPIC 1: fNIRS in Neurodevelopment Research
TOPIC 2: fNIRS in Clinical Applications
TOPIC 3: Multimodal measurements
TOPIC 4: fNIRS in cognitive and social interactions neuroscience research
TOPIC 5: Data analysis / signal processing/ AI
TOPIC 6: Hardware development
TOPIC 7: Other Topics
Special sessions.

TOPIC 1: fNIRS in Neurodevelopment Research

Topic Chairs:

fNIRS is an increasingly popular tool for neurodevelopmental research due to its portability and ease of use with infants and toddlers. fNIRS is most commonly employed for cognition research in topics such as language and social development in this population. Over the recent years, the technique has been used in more novel ways to understand atypical developmental trajectories, brain connectivity and brain functioning in naturalistic settings.

We invite abstracts in this topic that particularly focus on:

• Brain functioning in naturalistic environments
• Atypical developmental trajectories (Autism, ADHD)
• Diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders
• Brain connectivity during developmental stages
• Understanding the functioning of developing brain (social, language, executive function, sensor/motor development)

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TOPIC 2: fNIRS in Clinical Applications

Topic Chairs:

NIRS technologies such as fNIRS, Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy (DCS), brain oximetry, broadband NIRS (bNIRS), time domain and frequency domain NIRS are being used in clinical and preclinical research to monitor/image changes in cerebral hemodynamics/oxygenation/metabolism, brain connectivity, and functional activation associated with neurological injury, disease, and/or clinical management. NIRS technologies have been used in newborns with hypoxic-ischaemic injury, epilepsy, adults with traumatic brain injury and stroke, and elderly with dementia to name a few.

We invite abstracts in this topic that particularly focus on:

• Clinical management (intraoperative monitoring, anesthesia, diagnostics)
• Neurological injury related clinical and preclinical research (e.g. stroke, hypoxic-ischaemia)
• Chronic neurological disorders (e.g. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, epilepsy)
• Psychiatric disorders (e.g. depression, anxiety)
• Other (e.g. cancer)

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TOPIC 3: Multimodal measurements

Topic Chairs:

This section of the virtual fNIRS conference will focus on developing methods and using multimodal imaging around fNIRS. In addition to fNIRS, additional modalities can include but are not limited to EEG, DCS, eye-tracking, physiological measures such as blood pressure, respiration, and behavioral measurements such as motion trackers. We request abstracts that not only describe the paradigms and hardware setups of multimodal systems, but also how the different modalities complement each other to facilitate answering novel neuroscientific questions.

We invite abstracts in this topic that particularly focus on:

• Hardware solutions to integrate modalities
• Experimental designs for multimodal neuroimaging
• Multimodal fNIRS neuroimaging experiments to understand the mechanisms underlying neurovascular coupling
• Methods for multimodal signal processing and analysis including computational modelling
• Solutions to integrate physiological and brain information to enhance our understanding of brain function

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TOPIC 4: fNIRS in social and cognitive neuroscience

Topic Chairs:

This section of the virtual fNIRS conference will focus on social and cognitive neuroscience. These types of studies will include both single and multiple subject (hyperscanning) paradigms that investigate cortical functional activity underlying basic human functions including creation, framing, regulation, and responses to our experience of the mental, physical, social worlds.

We invite abstracts in this topic that particularly focus on:

• Social interaction in the natural and virtual environment.
• Neural correlates of communication during face-to-face or direct-eye gaze interactions.
• Application of game theory and decision making in social cognition research.
• Human computer Interaction.
• Multiple brain synchronization.
• Learning and performance improvements.
• What are the benefits of ecological validity in fNIRS research?
• What can we learn from the cortex in cognitive research?

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TOPIC 5: fNIRS data analysis

Topic Chairs:

This section of the virtual fNIRS conference will focus on data analysis. We request abstracts that describe novel signal processing techniques and data analysis pipelines for the processing of fNIRS neuroimaging data towards better indices of brain activity.

We invite abstracts in this topic that particularly focus on: 

• Algorithms for de-noising fNIRS signals (motion artifact correction, physiological interference regression and filtering)
• Statistical methods (e.g., classical, Bayesian, univariate, multivariate, etc) for the localization of functional brain activity
• Network analysis for the assessment across brains and across regions within a brain (functional connectivity, effective connectivity, brain-to-brain coupling algorithms)
• Novel methodologies for the analysis of fNIRS data recorded in unstructured and naturalistic environments
• Machine learning-based algorithms for the classification of brain responses to different tasks or to classify normal and abnormal brain activity patterns
• Novel methodologies for anatomical registration, including techniques specific to developmental studies
• Software platforms for data analysis

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TOPIC 6: Hardware development

Topic Chairs:

This session will focus on all aspects of hardware development: from the instrument components to the final device for lab or clinical use. This session will also welcome contributions about the development of innovative strategies for enhancing instrument performances and about the assessment of hardware performances with standardized methods.

We invite abstracts in this topic that particularly focus on:  

• Continuous-wave NIRS (CW-NIRS)
• Time-domain NIRS (TD-NIRS)
• Frequency-domain NIRS (FD-NIRS)
• Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy (DCS)
• Broadband NIRS (bNIRS)
• Multimodal NIRS devices (TD-DCS, FD-DCS, bNIRS-DCS)
• High density NIRS devices
• Wearable NIRS devices
• New components such as detectors, lasers, optical fibers
• Novel strategies for data acquisition: different wavelengths, different optode arrangements or inter-optode distance etc.

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TOPIC 7: Other Topics

We acknowledge that Topics 1 to 6 might not be fully inclusive in such a dynamic research environment and community.

We invite abstracts in this topic that particularly focus on:  

• Photobiomodulation
• Standardization: Hardware/instrument performances assessment, protocols for testing instruments, and phantom development
• fNIRS and sports
• Other

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SPECIAL SESSIONS

fNIRS Standards

Topic Chairs:

This special session will focus on research efforts aimed at enhancing the comparability of fNIRS studies and their reproducibility, with the ultimate goal of supporting the fNIRS community and especially the new users in producing research that is robust and well interpretable. Standardization refers to the establishment of standards and guidelines for every aspect of an fNIRS experiment (assessment of hardware performances, implementation of the experiment, probe positioning, pre-processing and statistical analysis). This session will start from the recently published paper by Yücel et al. (2021), “Best practices for fNIRS publications” and the way forward will be discussed.

From Neuroscience to Neuromancer

Chair:

The topic for this year’s special session will be on novel fNIRS technologies and how they are enabling new application areas. Cognitive neuroscience has been a longstanding application area in which fNIRS data is used to map the functional responses to tasks.  Here fNIRS address the question: “Where does the brain encode a task?” Recently, fNIRS is increasingly being asked to answer the reverse question: “Can fNIRS decode which task was performed?”  The decoding question places fNIRS in the context of brain computer interfaces and augmented reality. “Neuromancer”, one of the seminal cyber punk novels by William Gibson imagined many futures for such technology (optical/electrical not specified). While we are far from what Gibson envisioned, it’s clear the brain computer interface use case has drawn a dramatic uptick in attention and investment from Facebook, Google, Kernel and others. The convergence of these companies entering fNIRS with the application of fNIRS to BCI and AR, would have been pretty difficult to imagine happening say, five years ago. With that as the premise, the novel fNIRS technologies session will focus on opto-electronic advancements that are enabling a new generation of low-cost portable high performance fNIRS systems. There is great breadth to the in flowing technology and the out flowing systems. Advances in imaging sensors, and computational imaging are bringing coherent light measures and holography into high channel count systems. While steady advancements in consumer WiFi and Bluetooth technology are dramatically increasing the wearability of all types of fNIRS systems. This special session will be organized as a round table discussion with brief presentations by the panelists followed by a discussion focused on the prospectus of where these new technology advancements will take the field of fNIRS over the next two to five years.

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