Noninvasive observation of skeletal muscle contraction using near-infrared time-resolved reflectance and diffusing-wave spectroscopy.

We introduce a method for noninvasively measuring muscle contraction in vivo, based on near-infrared diffusing-wave spectroscopy (DWS). The method exploits the information about time-dependent shear motions within the contracting muscle that are contained in the temporal autocorrelation function g(1)(τ,t) of the multiply scattered light field measured as a function of lag time, τ, and time after stimulus, t. The analysis of g(1)(τ,t) measured on the human M. biceps brachii during repetitive electrical stimulation, using optical properties measured with time-resolved reflectance spectroscopy, shows that the tissue dynamics giving rise to the speckle fluctuations can be described by a combination of diffusion and shearing. The evolution of the tissue Cauchy strain e(t) shows a strong correlation with the force, indicating that a significant part of the shear observed with DWS is due to muscle contraction. The evolution of the DWS decay time shows quantitative differences between the M. biceps brachii and the M. gastrocnemius, suggesting that DWS allows to discriminate contraction of fast- and slow-twitch muscle fibers.

Processing of emotional words measured simultaneously with steady-state visually evoked potentials and near-infrared diffusing-wave spectroscopy.

BACKGROUND: Emotional stimuli are preferentially processed compared to neutral ones. Measuring the magnetic resonance blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) response or EEG event-related potentials, this has also been demonstrated for emotional versus neutral words. However, it is currently unclear whether emotion effects in word processing can also be detected with other measures such as EEG steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) or optical brain imaging techniques. In the present study, we simultaneously performed SSVEP measurements and near-infrared diffusing-wave spectroscopy (DWS), a new optical technique for the non-invasive measurement of brain function, to measure brain responses to neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant nouns flickering at a frequency of 7.5 Hz. RESULTS: The power of the SSVEP signal was significantly modulated by the words' emotional content at occipital electrodes, showing reduced SSVEP power during stimulation with pleasant compared to neutral nouns. By contrast, the DWS signal measured over the visual cortex showed significant differences between stimulation with flickering words and baseline periods, but no modulation in response to the words' emotional significance. CONCLUSIONS: This study is the first investigation of brain responses to emotional words using simultaneous measurements of SSVEPs and DWS. Emotional modulation of word processing was detected with EEG SSVEPs, but not by DWS. SSVEP power for emotional, specifically pleasant, compared to neutral words was reduced, which contrasts with previous results obtained when presenting emotional pictures. This appears to reflect processing differences between symbolic and pictorial emotional stimuli. While pictures prompt sustained perceptual processing, decoding the significance of emotional words requires more internal associative processing. Reasons for an absence of emotion effects in the DWS signal are discussed.

Diffusing-wave spectroscopy with dynamic contrast variation: disentangling the effects of blood flow and extravascular tissue shearing on signals from deep tissue.

We investigate the effects of blood flow and extravascular tissue shearing on diffusing-wave spectroscopy (DWS) signals from deep tissue, using an ex vivo porcine kidney model perfused artificially at controlled arterial pressure and flow. Temporal autocorrelation functions g((1))(τ) of the multiply scattered light field show a decay which is described by diffusion for constant flow, with a diffusion coefficient scaling linearly with volume flow rate. Replacing blood by a non-scattering fluid reveals a flow-independent background dynamics of the extravascular tissue. For a sinusoidally driven perfusion, field autocorrelation functions g((1))(τ, t') depend on the phase t' within the pulsation cycle and are approximately described by diffusion. The effective diffusion coefficient D(eff)(t') is modulated at the driving frequency in the presence of blood, showing coupling with flow rate; in the absence of blood, D(eff)(t') is modulated at twice the driving frequency, indicating shearing of extravascular tissue as the origin of the DWS signal. For both constant and pulsatile flow the contribution of extravascular tissue shearing to the DWS signal is small.