Past Issues

To measure behavioral indicators for human is always a struggle for scientists, especially psychiatrists. In the recent decades, there have been more progresses on the efforts to measure psychiatric symptoms by instruments, including different kinds of brain structural/functional tools (MRI, CT, and SPECT/PET scan), or different kinds of brain electrophysiological tools (EEG, MEG, HRV, etc.). But the practical use in psychiatry is limited so far. The photonic tool such as near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) application is an emerging tool to measure the brain function with least restriction in time and space requirement. In this overview, the author intends to introduce this new instrument and its application in psychiatric diagnoses, especially in differential diagnoses. Hopefully, a spotlight of hope in psychiatry is to be seen to help clinicians quantitatively measure psychiatric disorders in the near future.