• Question: What sort of things do you do with the babies and what do the tests invlolve?

    Asked by hazeltheunicorn to Maheen on 13 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Maheen Siddiqui

      Maheen Siddiqui answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      I use a brain imaging technique called NIRS.

      We place a headband around the babies head that contains two optical fibres. One of the fibres gives out light of a certain wavelength which gets absorbed into the brain by red blood cells in the blood that flows to the brain.

      Now if a certain region of the brain is more active, then that part of the brain has more blood flowing to it and therefore more red blood cells. This means that more of the light gets absorbed and the light intensity goes down. The second fibre on the head picks up this “change” in light intensity from when the light was first given out of the other fibre. This change can actually tell us a lot about brain activity!

      So we sit the baby in the mother’s lap in front a big TV screen (while they are wearing the NIRS headband) and we show them different videos. Then we look at the brain activity we got as a result of showing them the videos.

      I hope thats clear!

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