Our NTS system is featured in this article about Dr Sarah Lloyd-Fox’s pioneering research on infants using fNIRS, and the impact she has made along with her group on the technology and field as a whole.

When Babylab research fellow Sarah Lloyd-Fox began working with the technology more than a decade ago, it already had been used to study adult brains. To use it on babies, she had to develop it further with researchers at University College London. She now makes the standard headgear – a broad black band with attached cables – for other labs as well as conducting her own research.

Lloyd-Fox’s research has yielded a series of breakthroughs. One of her studies showed that babies as young as one day activate their ‘social brain’ in response to footage of a woman playing peekaboo. Another indicated that the brains of four- to six-month old babies at risk for autism responded less strongly to social cues compared to a low-risk group. No-one had been able to demonstrate this at such a young age before.

More generally, the technology raises the prospect of the early detection of a whole range of neurological differences, helping children get the right support long before the appearance of any outward symptoms.