Re-imagining fMRI for awake behaving infants

Thousands of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have
provided important insight into the human brain. However, only a handful
of these studies tested infants while they were awake, because of the
significant and unique methodological challenges involved. We report our
efforts to address these challenges, with the goal of creating methods for
awake infant fMRI that can reveal the inner workings of the developing,
preverbal mind. We use these methods to collect and analyze two fMRI
datasets obtained from infants during cognitive tasks, released publicly
with this paper. In these datasets, we explore and evaluate data quantity
and quality, task-evoked activity, and preprocessing decisions. We
disseminate these methods by sharing two software packages that integrate
infant-friendly cognitive tasks and eye-gaze monitoring with fMRI
acquisition and analysis. These resources make fMRI a feasible and
accessible technique for cognitive neuroscience in awake and behaving
human infants.