Our NTS device is part of groundbreaking research in the Gambia by Prof. Clare Elwell’s The BRIGHT Project, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

fNIRS technology is inexpensive, easy to set up and requires minimal training. In February 2012, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, physicists and neurodevelopmental psychologists from University College London and Birkbeck, University of London transported an fNIRS system to a field station in Gambia run by the UK Medical Research Council. Within a few hours the team had captured the brain of a four-month-old child, thought to be the first image of brain function from an African baby.

The BRIGHT (Brain Imaging for Global Health) project is currently imaging 200 infants from birth to their second birthday in Gambia including baby Fatima.

This five-year study, to be accompanied by parallel exercises in Bangladesh and India, will track brain function at various ages and will show how malnutrition and poverty affect the growing brain. Researchers will then be able to use this data to establish which nutritional supplements are needed to protect the brain. This may include giving mothers food so that so that they are well-nourished enough to breastfeed and give their babies the best start in life. By looking at babies’ brains in the first months of life, the team will be able to understand how best to prevent long-term cognitive impairment before it becomes irreversible.