Table 6. Summary of publications from the BRIGHT project to date.

Summary of abbreviations; fNIRS, functional near infrared spectroscopy; EEG/ERP, electroencephalography/event related potentials; EF, Executive Functions; LENA, Language Environment Analysis; LMICs, Low- and Middle-Income Countries. (NA indicates a review paper, therefore no specific data examined)

Citation	Title	Data examined	Main findings
Lloyd-Fox et al., 2019	Habituation and novelty detection fNIRS brain responses in 5- and 8-month-old infants: The Gambia and UK.	fNIRS habituation and novelty detection at 5 and 8 months in The Gambia and the UK	Differential profiles of habituation and novelty detection across the two cohorts.
Katus et al., 2019	Implementing neuroimaging and eye tracking methods to assess neurocognitive development of young infants in low- and middle-income countries	NA	fNIRS, EEG and eye tracking show robustness for use in a less well-controlled lab setting in The Gambia. We address common challenges related to implementing a multi-method protocol longitudinally.
Blasi et al., 2019	fNIRS for Tracking Brain Development in the Context of Global Health Projects	NA	Review of the use of fNIRS in the context of global health studies. We discuss the implementation of fNIRS studies in LMICs with a particular emphasis on the Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT) project, and we consider its potential in this emerging field.
Katus et al., 2020	ERP markers predict neurodevelopmental outcomes in young infants in rural Africa and the UK.	EEG auditory oddball data at 1 and 5 months, MSEL data at 5 months in UK and Gambia	UK and Gambian cohort both show immature novelty response at 1 month of age. A novelty response emerges at group level in UK, but not in the Gambian cohort. The emergence of a novelty response is associated with concurrently MSEL scores at 5 months of age.
Collins-Jones et al., 2021	Longitudinal infant fNIRS channel-space analyses are robust to variability parameters at the group-level: An image reconstruction investigation.	fNIRS Social paradigm at 5, 8 and 12 months in The Gambia	Traditionally, fNIRS analysis is done in the channel space, where data from equivalent channels across participants is combined, assuming that head size and source and detector positions are constant across participants. We conclude that channel -space analysis of longitudinal fNIRS data is robust to assumptions about head size and array position given the variability in these parameters in our dataset.
Katus et al., 2022b	Neural Marker of Habituation at 5 Months of Age Associated with Deferred Imitation Performance at 12 Months: A Longitudinal Study in the UK and The Gambia.	EEG auditory oddball data at 1 and 5 months, deferred imitation data at 8 and 12 months of age in UK and Gambia	EEG habituation indices at 5 months of age were associated with imitation responses at 12 months of age in both cohorts. In the Gambian cohort, EEG novelty responses at 5 months were also associated with imitation responses as 12 months of age.
Katus et al., 2023	Longitudinal fNIRS and EEG metrics of habituation and novelty detection are correlated in 1-18-month-old infants.	EEG auditory oddball data and fNIRS habituation and novelty detection data at 1, 5 and 18 months in Gambian cohort only.	fNIRS and EEG responses were correlated for habituation at 1 and 5 months of age and for novelty detection at 5 and 18 months of age.
Milosavljevic et al., 2023	Executive functioning skills and their environmental predictors among pre-school aged children in South Africa and The Gambia.	Executive Functioning (EF; working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility) collected at 3-5 years in the Gambia, and a South African sample of the same age. Performance on these tasks was examined in relation to task norms, and family enrichment factors (enrichment activities, diversity of caregivers) and socioeconomic status (SES), and caregiver educational attainment.	The Gambian and South African participants showed normative performance across EF tasks, with evidence of heightened performance on the measure of cognitive flexibility. However, there were no associations between EF performance and measures of caregiver enrichment, SES or caregiver education in either site except an association between enrichment activities and working memory in the Gambian sample.
McCann et al., 2023	Iron status in early infancy is associated with cognitive development up to pre-school age in rural Gambia.	Iron status in early infancy and trajectories of cognitive development using MSEL and the Eye-Tracking Gap Overlap task.	Iron status (measured by soluble transferrin receptor -sTfR) at 5 months of age is associated with MSEL cognitive score at 5 months and trajectory of cognitive development from 5months to 5 years. sTfR at 5 months was also associated with an eye tracking measure of visual attention in cross sectional analysis, however this relationship was diminished by 5 years of age.
Katus*, Crespo-Llado* et al., 2024b	It takes a village: caregiver diversity and language contingency in the UK and rural Gambia	LENA data at 12, 18 and 24 months for UK and Gambia.	In the Gambia, earlier LENA measures of turn taking were associated with subsequent child vocalisations. In the UK, there was a trend toward such associations. In the Gambian cohort, we explored the role of caregiving: variability in caregiver numbers from one day to the next was associated with less turn taking. Total number of caregivers showed an inverted u-shaped relationship with turn taking: a medium number of caregivers was associated with highest turn taking frequencies.
Macrae et al., (in press)	Cognitive control in infancy: attentional predictors using a tablet-based measure	Tablet-based measure of cognitive skills, attentional disengagement (Gap-overlap task) and general cognitive skills (MSEL) at 5-24 months in the UK.	Participants showed significant improvements (at 24 months compared to 18 months) in cognitive control. General cognitive skills (measured using the MSEL) were not significantly associated with cognitive control, while attentional disengagement at 8 and 18 months was a significant predictor.
Pilot phase of the BRIGHT Project (2013 – 2014)
Milosavljevic et al., 2019	Adaptation of the Mullen Scales of Early Learning for use among infants aged 5- to 24-months in rural Gambia.	Pilot data collected using the MSEL, and measures of physical growth (height-for-age [HAZ], weight-for-height [WHZ], Head Circumference [HCZ]), collected at 9-24 months in The Gambia.	Primarily, we report on the method adapting the MSEL for use in the rural Gambian context. We also find that infants show normative MSEL performance early in infancy (at 5-9 months), however from 10-14 months, they show poorer performance compared to normed scores. Additionally, both HAZ and WHZ were significantly associated with MSEL performance.
Lloyd-Fox et al., (2017)	Cortical specialisation to social stimuli from the first days to the second year of life: A rural Gambian cohort.	Pilot fNIRS and anthropometric data collected in first wave of longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses of infants aged 1 – 24 months.
Lloyd-Fox et al., (2014)	Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to assess cognitive function in infants in rural Africa.	Pilot fNIRS data collected during first study in The Gambia – 4-8 month olds watched videos of a auditory and visual social cognition paradigm; a task showing Gambian adults performing social movements (i.e. Peekaboo) or vocalisations vs non-social stimuli	Distinct regions of the posterior superior temporal and inferior frontal cortex evidenced either visual-social activation or vocally selective activation (vocal > non-vocal). The patterns replicated those observed within similar aged infants in previous studies in the UK. These are the first reported data on the measurement of localized functional brain activity in young infants in Africa
Begus et al., (2016)	Using fNIRS to study working memory in infants in rural Africa.	Pilot fNIRS data collected in cross-sectional analyses - 12-16 month olds watched videos of an object permanence paradigm; a task testing the ability to create and hold a mental schema of an object in mind, when it is no longer visually accessible	Differential neural activity was seen when infants observed objects being hidden for 3 (posterior superior temporal activity) compared to 6 seconds (additional regions of inferior frontal and anterior superior temporal activity). This cortical activation could potentially reflect working memory and executive functioning.
Papademetriou et al. (2014)	Optical topography image reconstruction of brain activation in Gambian infant	Optical topography of fNIRS data from Lloyd-Fox et al., 2014	A finite element model to model the propagation of light through tissue and create optical topography images of brain activation
Blasi et al., (2014)	Test–retest reliability of functional near infrared spectroscopy in infants	Test re-test reliability of fNIRS signals from longitudinal data collection at 4 – 8 and 12 – 16 months of age	At the group level, good spatial overlap of significant responses and signal reliability was seen At participant level, spatial overlap was acceptable although results highlighted that signal reliability varied between participants.