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. 2025 Aug 29;16:1578375. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1578375

Table 2.

Characteristics of studies reporting resting-state near-infrared spectroscopy date for dementia and MCI.

Author Title Regions of interest Results indicators Behavioral performance fNIRS findings Classification results
Ho, Thi Kieu Khanh et al. 2022 (26) Deep learning-based multilevel classification of Alzheimer’s disease using non-invasive functional near-infrared spectroscopy Prefrontal Hermodynamics Significant differences in performance were observed between the subject groups on the N-back task. When at rest, no differences in HbO were observed between the four subject groups. Patients with pAD exhibited lower HbO values than both HC and aAD patients.
Keles, Hasan Onur et al. 2022 (25) Screening for Alzheimer’s disease using prefrontal resting-state functional near-infrared spectroscopy Prefrontal Hermodynamics N/A The bilateral activation of PFC was found to be significantly diminished in patients with AD in comparison to the HC group. The input of changes in oxygenated haemoglobin concentration as features into a support vector machine (SVM) resulted in a significantly higher level of accuracy than chance in predicting the presence and severity of AD.
Marmarelis, Vasilis Z. et al. 2017 (15) Comparison of model-based indices of cerebral autoregulation and vasomotor reactivity using transcranial doppler versus near-infrared spectroscopy in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment Frontal Tissue oxygenation index N/A The response of PFC tissue oxygenation to alterations in CO2 pulses was observed to be diminished in aMCI patients when compared to HC controls.
Tarumi, Takashi et al. 2014 (16) Dynamic cerebral autoregulation and tissue oxygenation in amnestic mild cognitive impairment Frontal Tissue oxygenation index The patient group (aMCI) exhibited lower scores on delayed recall and higher scores on TMT relative to the HC group. aMCI patients had lower TOI, but the other measurements did not differ between the two groups.
Li, Wenhao et al. 2022 (13) Identifying cognitive impairment in elderly using coupling functions between cerebral oxyhemoglobin and arterial blood pressure Prefrontal Tissue oxygenation index, Neurovascular coupling The patient group (MCI and CI) scored significantly lower on the MoCA than the HC group The TOI was markedly diminished in the right and left PFC in both the MCI and CI groups in comparison to the HC group.
Liu, Jie et al. 2014 (14) Global brain hypoperfusion and oxygenation in amnestic mild cognitive impairment Not mentioned Tissue oxygenation index, Neurovascular coupling The patient group (aMCI) scored significantly lower on the LM than the HC group The aMCI and HC groups had different brain blood flow, vascular resistance and metabolic rates.
Viola, S. et al. 2013 (17) Tissue oxygen saturation and pulsatility index as markers for amnestic mild cognitive impairment: NIRS and TCD study Temporoparietal, Parietal Tissue oxygenation index N/A The aMCI group exhibited a markedly diminished TOI in the temporoparietal cortex bilaterally in comparison to the HC group.
Yoo and Hong 2019 (61) Hemodynamics analysis of patients with mild cognitive impairment during working memory tasks Prefrontal Functional connectivity N/A The interchannel correlations were observed to be higher in the HC group in comparison to the MCI patient group. Classification was conducted using both LDA and SVM, with the former achieving a classification accuracy of 73.08% and the latter a classification accuracy of 71.15%.
Niu, Haijing et al. 2019 (22) Abnormal dynamic functional connectivity and brain states in Alzheimer’s diseases: Functional near-infrared spectroscopy study Entire cortex Functional connectivity The patient group (aMCI and AD) scored significantly lower on the MMSE, MoCA, and AVLT than the HC group aMCI and AD patients have increased dynamics of functional brain connectivity and an abnormal frequency of specific brain connectivity states.
Zhang, Shen et al. 2022 (23) Early screening model for mild cognitive impairment based on resting-state functional connectivity: A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study Prefrontal, Temporal, Parietal, Occipital Functional connectivity The patient group (aMCI) scored significantly lower on the MMSE and MoCA than the HC group The aMCI group had weaker functional connectivity than the HC group. RPF-LO was the best in ROI-based classification and had the same AUC values. CH15-CH59 did well for channel-based classification.
Bu, Lingguo et al. 2019 (18) Effective connectivity in subjects with mild cognitive impairment as assessed using functional near-infrared spectroscopy Prefrontal, Motor, Occipital Functional connectivity N/A The MCI group had lower CS levels than the HC group between relevant brain regions. MMSE and MoCA scores were linked to CS levels between relevant brain regions.
Nguyen, Thien et al. 2019 (21) Investigation of brain functional connectivity in patients with mild cognitive impairment: A functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) study Frontal Functional connectivity The patient group (MCI) demonstrated a significantly reduced number of words produced in the VFT task in comparison to the HC group. Right hemispheric and interhemispheric connectivity (measured by HbO) was significantly higher in the MCI group than in the HC group at rest.
Chiarelli, Antonio M. et al. 2021 (19) Evidence of neurovascular un-coupling in mild Alzheimer’s disease through multimodal EEG-fNIRS and multivariate analysis of resting-state data Frontal, Prefrontal Neurovascular coupling The patient group (AD) scored significantly lower on the MMSE than the HC group Decoupling between signals from EEG and functional near-infrared spectroscopy in AD patients.
Li, Xuanyu et al. 2018 (28) Decreased resting-state brain signal complexity in patients with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease: A multi-scale entropy analysis Frontal, Temporal, Parietal, Occipital Multiscale entropy The patient group (aMCI and AD) scored significantly lower on the MMSE, MoCA, and AVLT than the HC group AD patients had less complex brain signals in several networks. For two of these, the signals were linked to better cognitive performance.
Zeller, Julia B. M. et al. 2019 (27) Reduced spontaneous low frequency oscillations as measured with functional near-infrared spectroscopy in mild cognitive impairment Frontal, Temporal Low-frequency oscillator The patient group (MCI) scored significantly lower on the DemTect than the HC group The number of LFOs observed in the parietal cortex of the MCI group was found to be significantly lower in comparison to the HC group.

TOI, tissue oxygenation index; CBFV, cerebral blood flow velocity; CVRI, cerebral vascular response index; BMI, body mass index; BP, blood pressure.