**5. Applications in child psychiatry**

156 Infrared Spectroscopy – Life and Biomedical Sciences

and dorsal and ventrolateral putamen of mothers responded more positively to video clips

In contrast, surprisingly, little research is available about the neural correlates of infant brain activity associated with infant-mother attachment. Recently, using NIRS for awake infants, Minagawa-kawai et al. found that infants showed greater activation in the orbitofrontal cortex when they were presented with movie clips in which their own mothers smiled

Additionally, an fMRI study on adults revealed that the orbitofrontal cortex is activated by attractive faces (O'Doherty et al., 2003; Tsukiura & Cabeza, 2011). Similarly, the orbitofrontal cortex has been shown to have various functions, such as social cognition, motivational evaluation, emotional processing, and decision-making (Adolphs, 2003;

Infant-mother attachment underpins the basis for life-long interpersonal relationships. Infants begin their life with affectionate social interactions with their mothers immediately after delivery. Many studies have shown that social interaction with caregivers is essential for healthy development in children (e.g. Smyke et al, 2007). However, little is known about how the brains of children develop continually until adulthood through social interaction

Face-to-face communication between mothers and infants is highly complicated, and is affected by many confounding variables, such as face expression, pitch of speech, and contingency of turn-taking. Therefore, it is technically difficult in experimental paradigms to examine the effects of face-to-face communication of mothers and infants. Further research is required to improve experimental paradigms that better approximate real life (Grossmann & Johnson, 2007) and to examine effects of face-to-face communication with the mother on

In contrast to infant studies, studies on cognitive development in preschool children have largely not used neuroimaging methods. However, several studies have examined haemodynamic changes of the cerebral cortex using NIRS during cognitive shifting (Moriguchi & Hiraki, 2009, 2011) or working memory tasks (Tsujii et al., 2009, 2010;

Moriguchi & Hiraki (2009) found that 3-year-old children who committed perseverative errors lacked activation in their inferior prefrontal regions during cognitive shifting tasks, whereas those who performed the tasks correctly displayed activation of the right inferior prefrontal regions. Furthermore, a longitudinal study of prefrontal function in 3–4-year-old children showed that children who performed better tasks at 3 years of age showed significant activation of the right inferior prefrontal regions at 3 years of age, and significant activation of the both inferior prefrontal regions at 4 years of age (Moriguchi & Hiraki, 2011). Children who showed poorer performance at 3 years of age exhibited no significant inferior prefrontal activation at 3 years of age, but significant left inferior prefrontal activation at 4 years of age. It was therefore suggested that inferior prefrontal activation on either the right or left side may be more important for successful cognitive shifting than

of their own infants than to clips of unfamiliar infants (Noriuchi et al., 2008).

(Minagawa-Kawai et al., 2009).

the development of the brain of the infant.

**4.4 Cognitive development in preschool children** 

Kringelbach, 2005).

with caregivers.

Tsujimoto et al., 2004).
