Hyelin S.

10/17/2015
AP Chemistry
Report on Near-infrared Spectroscopy as an Auxiliary Tool in the Study of Child
Development

Near-infrared Spectroscopy as an Auxiliary Tool in the Study of Child Development is

an article about using the NIRS (Near-infrared Spectroscopy) as an aid tool to access the cortical
hemodynamics in the study of child development. Basically, it is observing how the neural
systems change and differ from children of different ages. This is not an article that shows the the
results of the hypothesis by testing, but an article that shows how NIRS is possibly the best tool
for assessing the hemodynamics and neuronal activation, and proving its statement with
experiments.
From the Introduction, it is clearly stated that the purpose of this experiment is to carry
out a review on the use of NIRS as a tool to assess cerebral hemodynamics in studying normal
childhood development, such as language development, social skills development, and
development in processing objects and people. As mentioned previously, since this is not an
article on testing hypothesis, there is no distinct hypothesis in this experiment. It was previously
known that this experiment using spectroscopy is based on the fact that neural activity affects
and changes blood oxygenation, cerebral blood flow and volume. Also, it is known that it is
possible to calculate the light captured and use it to measure the activity in the specific tissue.
The Results section provides information on the main results it has acquired from
experiments with a lot more detail. But firstly, the independent variable in the experiment was

the age of the children, since for each criteria of experiment such as language development or
social skills development, several children of different ages mostly from 2 months old to 4 years
old were used. Then, the dependent variable was the result of the cortical hemodynamics that
depended on the age of the child. Here, the controlled variable was the spectroscopy used, which
is NIRS.
The results of the experiment depended on what the experiment was about. For example,
the experiment regarding the childrens social skills development suggested that about 5 months
old, the child had a specialized area of the temporal cortex used for social skills. Also, the
experiment on language development suggested that about 6 months old, the child has the ability
to respond to specific language, but it stabilizes at about 12 months old. Like this, the article has
several different results depending on the topic of the experiments, but supports one major topic,
which is the validity of using NIRS to assess children development.
The Discussion section of the article mainly states the limitations in the experiment, such
as finding the balance between the number of repetitions of the experiments to get a reliable
result and not making the experiment long and stressful. Like this, there are other limitations in
this experiment especially because it is an experiment on actual human, and therefore, there
could be slight off in the results.
This article is related to what we have recently learned in class in many ways. Firstly, this
article is mainly about using spectroscopy to do an experiment on a certain topic. Similarly,
recently in class, we have learned about spectroscopy both through chem activity worksheet and
lab. Especially in lab, we learned how spectroscopy is used in daily life, for example measuring
the dye in the sports drink. Likewise, in this article, spectroscopy was used to assess the cortical
hemodynamics in childrens development. The difference was the type of the spectroscopy used;

in the lab, it was Spec 20 spectrophotometer, while in this article, it is Near-infrared

spectroscopy.
Near-infrared spectroscopy works similar to how other spectroscopy works. Commonly,
there is a source, a detector, and a dispersive element that allows to record the intensity at
different wavelength. Then the spectrum measures either reflection or transmission. In this case
of the experiment, to measure the cortical hemodynamics in childrens brain, they get cords that
connect the machine to the head of the children. In this way, they can observe neural activity in
the brain.
The experiment made by using NIRS in this article is important in everyday lives and
especially biology because by using NIRS, we can observe the normal rate of development in
children, and see which children has slow development and possibly detect a problem in the
childrens development. Also, having a more thorough access to observing a human brain is a
significant thing because human brain is still not perfectly understood by the scientists and this
can be a one step closer in learning more about human brain.