Recognition of stimulus-evoked neuronal optical response by identifying chaos levels of near-infrared spectroscopy time series

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) can detect two different kinds of signals from the human brain: the hemodynamic response (slow) and the neuronal response (fast). This paper explores a nonlinear aspect in the tactile-stimulus-evoked neuronal optical response over a NIRS time series (light intensity variation). The existence of the fast optical responses (FORs) over the time series recorded in stimulus sessions is confirmed by event-related averaging. The chaos levels of the NIRS time series recorded both in stimulus and in rest sessions are then identified according to the estimated largest Lyapunov exponent. The obtained results ascertain that stimulus-evoked neuronal optical responses can be detected in the somatosensory cortex using continuous-wave NIRS equipment. Further, the results strongly suggest that the chaos level can be used to recognize the FORs in NIRS time series and, thereby, the state of the pertinent brain activity.

► We explored the chaotic characteristics associated with the neuronal optical response dynamics.
► We found that the FOR time series are more chaotic than the non-FOR time series.
► We confirmed the tactile stimuli evoked FOR can be detected at somatosensory cortex.