Wearable Functional Brain Imaging for Population Mental Health

In the past three decades, functional MRI (fMRI) has become the gold standard for noninvasive, in vivo mapping of brain function in humans. However, despite its substantial research utility and billions of dollars of federal investment, fMRI has yet to make its way into mainstream mental health clinics. This is mainly driven by the lack of reproducibility of fMRI findings at the individual level due to the suboptimal measurement reliability of short-quantity fMRI recordings. Here, I discuss (1) the roadblocks in clinical translation of fMRI for informing and diagnosis of mental illnesses, (2) the need for low-cost, wearable electronics to facilitate large-scale, mental health studies, and (3) our early attempt toward developing a wearable optical brain imaging system that can be used at home for monitoring brain activity in patients with mental illnesses, using Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as a model illness to test the feasibility of this innovative paradigm.