On December 10, 2025, the School of Foreign Languages at Southeast University successfully held its signature academic event, “Debate of Discourses,” and a session of the lecture series “Wenshu Exploring the Essence: Frontiers of Foreign Languages and Literature Research.” Professor Wang Daifa from Beihang University was invited to deliver a keynote lecture titled “Innovation and Application of fNIRS Technology from an Interdisciplinary Perspective.” The lecture attracted a large number of faculty and students and was chaired by Professor Zhou Tongquan, with Dean Liu Kehua delivering the opening address.

Professor Zhou Tongquan briefly introduced Professor Wang Daifa's long-term research contributions and technology transfer experience in functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) for brain imaging and brain-computer interface (BCI) applications. Professor Wang's team has been deeply involved in the R&D of China's optical BCI equipment, with extensive practical expertise in whole-brain imaging, wearable devices, and multi-scenario applications. The team has also played a key role in enterprise development, technical standard formulation, and the promotion of national key projects.

Beginning with the evolving trends in brain imaging technology, Professor Wang noted that we are currently in an important period of coordinated development between artificial intelligence and brain-computer intelligence. The integration of computing power, algorithms, and brain function detection technology, he argued, will profoundly reshape societal development. As BCI has been identified as a key area in China's future industrial planning, a profound technological transformation is likely to occur over the next 10 to 15 years. In this context, fNIRS—a non-invasive, wearable brain imaging method suitable for dynamic and natural settings—shows notable advantages in terms of safety, cost-effectiveness, and scalability.

Explaining the working principles of fNIRS, Professor Wang vividly demonstrated how the technology indirectly reflects brain activity through optical signal changes and highlighted its unique value in real-world applications. Compared with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), fNIRS is better suited to natural environments such as classrooms, meetings, and interactive tasks; relative to electroencephalography (EEG), its data are more intuitive to analyze, and it more readily enables multi-person synchronous monitoring. With the ongoing improvement of wearable devices, fNIRS can stably capture cortical-level changes in brain function, offering flexible and reliable technical support for interdisciplinary research in linguistics, education, medicine, and related fields.

Regarding application practices, Professor Wang systematically outlined the main uses of fNIRS in real-world contexts. The technology has been widely applied in monitoring group brain activity in music education, tracking phonological processing in language learning, comparing classroom effectiveness across teaching methods, and dynamically studying brain function during collaborative learning and creative thinking tasks. Taking language education as an example, fNIRS can be used to observe learners' brain responses during phoneme discrimination, phonetic training, or multimodal learning environments, offering a new perspective for uncovering the cognitive mechanisms of language acquisition. Professor Wang emphasized that these applications reflect the flexibility and potential of fNIRS in natural settings, multi-agent interaction, and interdisciplinary integration.

Drawing on his team's experience, Professor Wang also shared insights on the current status and challenges of technology transfer in the field. He noted that while brain–computer intelligence holds broad prospects, further coordination is still needed among policies, technical systems, and application scenarios. Despite certain difficulties in commercializing research outcomes, with the gradual refinement of relevant standards and sustained national support, optical BCI is progressively building a more complete technical system and application ecosystem, providing a foundation for China's innovation and development in this area.

During the Q&A session, faculty and students raised questions on topics such as data synchronization in virtual reality environments, signal processing in equipment, multimodal data collection, and the potential application of near-infrared technology in linguistic research. From the perspectives of experimental design and technical implementation, Professor Wang provided professional responses on issues including cross-modal data alignment, automatic device calibration, and multimodal compatibility. He also pointed out, based on practical experience, that future interdisciplinary work between linguistics and brain science could fruitfully explore areas such as age-related cognitive impairment, teacher–student brain synchronization in natural classrooms, and the mechanisms of empathy in dyadic interaction.

Rich in content and forward-looking in perspective, the lecture not only showcased interdisciplinary advances in fNIRS technology but also offered new methodological insights for research in linguistics, psychology, and education. Attendees expressed that they were highly inspired and gained a deeper understanding of the role of brain science technology in the future of education and social development. The successful hosting of this lecture has also laid a solid foundation for the school to advance interdisciplinary cooperation in brain science and to facilitate integrated innovation in artificial intelligence and language research.

Text: Li Jiapeng

Photos: Li Jiapeng

Translated: Li Yixiao, Zhang Tingting

Proofreading: Guo Qing