Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most frequent cause of severe memory loss in the elderly. Early detection of AD is the key to preventing, slowing or stopping the disease. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a non-invasive neuroimaging technique capable of monitoring brain activation. Here, we investigated the utility of fNIRS in measuring the brain activity of healthy adults during memory encoding and retrieval under a face-name paired-associate learning task. Their study demonstrates that fNIRS can robustly measure memory encoding and retrieval-related brain activity. Future work will include similar measurements in populations with progressing memory deficits. Their approach, if successful, will introduce a non-invasive, inexpensive and easily accessible tool for identifying early stages of AD.
you can find Meryem paper @ nature.com