Towards Gamersxe2x80x99 Experience Level Decoding with Optical Brain Imaging functional Nearinfrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) is fast becoming an alternative optical neuroimaging modality to functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) owing to its portable, nonconstrained environment. With the advent of fNIRS numerous studies, and key populations once considered indecipherable because of multitude operational challenges associated with fMRI such as restriction to stay in a supine position motionless surrounded by huge magnets, can now be read into. In this work, brain activity of participants, who are gamers of varying expertise levels, watch images or videos of a game, League of Legends, is recorded using fNIRS. The participantxe2x80x99s fNIRS data is then analysed to distinguish between expertise levels of gamers using a support vector machine classifier with a radial basis function kernel. Our results demonstrate the adequacy of using fNIRS data to distinguish between the expertise levels of participants. In particular, the classification accuracy is optimum for novice vs. intermediate participants followed by novices vs. experts for all experiments. The least accurate classification results obtained are for intermediates vs. experts. An attempt is also made to read from different dimensions of hemoglobin to establish which biomarker best respresents the neural activity in the brain. Since the methods employed are independent of the study, we believe this work has strong implications for a professionalxe2x80x99s objective assessment which is paramount for those occupations especially associated with greater risks e.g. surgeons, pilots.

Multiscale Entropy as a New Feature for EEG and fNIRS Analysis The present study aims to apply multiscale entropy (MSE) to analyse brain activity in terms of brain complexity levels and to use simultaneous electroencephalogram and functional nearinfrared spectroscopy (EEGfNIRS) recordings for brain functional analysis. A memory task was selected to demonstrate the potential of this multimodality approach since memory is a highly complex neurocognitive process, and the mechanisms governing selective retention of memories are not fully understood by other approaches. In this study, 15 healthy participants with normal colour vision participated in the visual memory task, which involved the making the executive decision of remembering or forgetting the visual stimuli based on hisher own will. In a continuous stimulus set, 250 indooroutdoor scenes were presented at random, between periods of fixation on a black background. The participants were instructed to make a binary choice indicating whether they wished to remember or forget the image; both stimulus and response times were stored for analysis. The participants then performed a scene recognition test to confirm whether or not they remembered the images. The results revealed that the participants intentionally memorising a visual scene demonstrate significantly greater brain complexity levels in the prefrontal and frontal lobe than when purposefully forgetting a scene; p u003c 0.05 (twotailed). This suggests that simultaneous EEG and fNIRS can be used for brain functional analysis, and MSE might be the potential indicator for this multimodality approach.