Activity of the human visual cortex measured non-invasively by diffusing-wave spectroscopy

Activity of the human visual cortex, elicited by steady-state flickering at 8Hz, is non-invasively probed by multi-speckle diffusing-wave spectroscopy (DWS). Parallel detection of the intensity fluctuations of statistically equivalent, but independent speckles allows to resolve stimulation-induced changes in the field autocorrelation of multiply scattered light of less than 2%. In a group of 9 healthy subjects we find a faster decay of the field autocorrelation function during the stimulation periods for data measured with a long-distance probe (30mm source-receiver distance) at 2 positions over the occipital cortex (t-test: t(8) = -2.672, p = 0.028 < 0.05 for position 1, t(8) = -2.874, p = 0.021 < 0.05 for position 2). In contrast, no statistically significant change is seen when a short-distance probe (16 mm source-receiver distance) is used (t-test: t(8) = -2.043, p = 0.075 > 0.05 for position 1, t(8) = -2.146, p = 0.064 > 0.05 for position 2). The enhanced dynamics observed with DWS is positively correlated with the functional increase of blood volume in the visual cortex, while the heartbeat rate is not affected by stimulation. Our results indicate that the DWS signal from the visual cortex is governed by the regional cerebral blood flow velocity. (C) 2007 Optical Society of America.