Gowerlabs’ NTS fNIRS system in Dhaka, Bangladesh, was used in one of the first studies looking at how the brains of babies and toddlers in the developing world respond to adversity.

About five years ago, the Gates Foundation became interested in tracking brain development in young children living with adversity, especially stunted growth and poor nutrition. The foundation had been studying children's responses to vaccines at Kakon's clinic. The high rate of stunting, along with the team's strong bonds with participants, clinched the deal.

To get the study off the ground, the foundation connected the Dhaka team with Charles Nelson, a paediatric neuroscientist at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts. He had expertise in brain imaging — and in childhood adversity. In 2000, he began a study tracking the brain development of children who had grown up in harsh Romanian orphanages. Although fed and sheltered, the children had almost no stimulation, social contact or emotional support. Many have experienced long-term cognitive problems.

Some 130 children in the Dhaka study had fNIRS tests at 36 months old, and the researchers saw distinct patterns of brain activity in those with stunting and other adversity. The shorter the children were, the more brain activity they had in response to images and sounds of non-social stimuli, such as trucks. Taller children responded more to social stimuli, such as women's faces. This could suggest delays in the process by which brain regions become specialized for certain tasks, Nelson says.