Cortical activation pattern for finger movement: A feasibility study towards a fNIRS based BCI

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has become an established tool to investigate brain function and it is an interesting modality for brain computer interfaces (BCIs). This paper was aimed at examining whether fNIRS can be an appropriate BCIs modality. Brain activities of three subjects performing a right-hand finger movement (flex and extend the fingers and thumb) tasks were measured by fNIRS. And finger movement was carried out with active and passive modes. Passive movements were provided by a functional electrical stimulation (FES). Results demonstrated that while all movement modes commonly activated primary motor cortex, there were considerable differences between finger and thumb movement. The pattern of neural activation in active movement was resembled by passive movement. This result indicates that finger and thumb movement can be classified and then we saw possibility of the utilizing fNIRS into the field of BCIs.