Neural Noise

fNIRS as a diagnostic aid in stable schizophrenia

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  • Functional near-infrared spectroscopy has been studied as a diagnostic aid for stable schizophrenia.1
  • fNIRS has diagnostic use cases in psychiatry with relevance to non-invasive neuroimaging and potential BCI/neurofeedback applications.1 1

Gardner updates

  • fNIRS was studied as a diagnostic aid in stable schizophrenia; relevance to non-invasive neuroimaging and potential BCI/neurofeedback applications. 1

Weekly enrichment (2026-07-20)

  • The primary study (Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2025; PMC12497714) evaluated fNIRS recorded during a verbal fluency task (VFT) as a diagnostic aid distinguishing patients with stable schizophrenia from healthy controls.2 3
  • Patients with schizophrenia produced fewer valid words and showed lower task-related β values (channels 8, 25-26, 35-36 and 47-48) plus decreased integral values (IV) in the prefrontal and bilateral temporal lobes.2 3
  • IV of the bilateral temporal lobes separated patients from controls with an AUC of 0.781 (95% CI 0.667-0.896; sensitivity 0.633, specificity 0.844).2 3
  • The β value of channel 48 gave an AUC of 0.762 (95% CI 0.655-0.869; sensitivity 0.867, specificity 0.533); combining the two biomarkers raised the AUC to 0.820 (95% CI 0.720-0.920).2 3
  • Temporal-lobe IV correlated positively with cognition, including speed of processing, attention/vigilance, social cognition and MCCB total score, linking the hemodynamic signal to functional deficits.2 3
  • No significant reduction in centroid value (CV) was observed, suggesting preserved post-task cortical homeostasis in this stable cohort.2 3
  • For context, machine learning on frontotemporal NIRS during VFT has separated first-episode schizophrenia from controls at ~68.6% (SVM) up to 79.7% (deep neural network) accuracy.4
  • Channel-optimization work reports up to 87.0% accuracy (16 channels, genetic algorithm plus wavelet features) and 86.5% with only 8 channels, and a developing-country portable-fNIRS study found a right orbitofrontal AUC of 0.802 during VFT—both supporting low-cost screening use.5 6

Footnotes

  1. https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMikgFBVV95cUxQazBQTjU0Zmh0QzZvbmtrNmRJUE1LQWxEdkYtTU5RSlVzX0FuTVp5YzkxZ3VuZE9PX2NVSzFuTnpxdzFkSElvM3JBNzNVbWI2ekJSSFBrcUc3c3Zqc09Zcnd4M2FXZlliUjdhR3RsdjgwRW13VEhCMFAwanpwdUJ4WUhpZ1FwM2lXa2RwRkY0YUt1QQ?oc=5 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1635854/full ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  3. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12497714/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  4. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.655292/full ↩

  5. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.939411/full ↩

  6. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1061284/full ↩

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