Multimodal brain imaging of serotonin

描述(由申请人提供)：尽管对大脑结构和功能的测量对于连接大脑结构和功能至关重要，但这些测量没有适当地解决脑神经传递的重要方面。到目前为止，绘制大脑神经递质系统图的尝试在很大程度上仅限于对啮齿类动物和死后人脑样本进行组织化学、mRNA表达或放射配基分析。随着新兴的活体分子成像技术，特别是正电子发射断层扫描(PET)，现在已经有可能在体内成像来自各种神经递质系统的人脑受体和转运体，至少在一定程度上可以得到充分验证的可量化的特定PET放射性示踪剂。这种方法缺乏将PET分析与尖端解剖和功能分析相结合的能力，以根据受体与结构和功能的相互作用来详尽地表征受体结合。这项提案寻求将波士顿马蒂诺斯中心创建的freesurfer(surfer.nmr.mgh.atherard.edu)中的分析工具与PET分析相结合，创建5HTT和5HT4血清素受体结合潜力的图谱。将使用的数据来自丹麦的集成分子脑成像中心(www.cimbi.org)。我们将分析47名同时拥有5HTT和5HT4数据的受试者，从而首次研究这些受体在个体中的协方差。还提出了一种从5-HTT和MRI扫描中分割中缝背核的技术。利用这种分割和静息状态的功能磁共振成像也将研究中缝核的功能连接性。我们还将创建中缝核的解剖概率图谱，该图谱可用于在MRI扫描但不能进行PET扫描的受试者中分割中缝。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Although measurement of both brain structure and function are critically important for linking brain structure and function, these measurements do not appropriately address the important aspect of brain neurotransmission. So far, attempts to map the brain's neurotransmitter systems have largely been limited to histochemical, mRNA-expression or radioligand analyses in rodents and postmortem human brain samples. With the emerging in vivo molecular imaging technologies, in particular positron emission tomography (PET), it has now become possible to image in vivo human brain receptors and transporters from various neurotransmitter systems, at least to the extent that well-validated quantifiable specific PET radiotracers are available. Missing from this approach is the ability to combine PET analysis with cutting edge anatomical and functional analysis to exhaustively characterize receptor binding in terms of its interaction with structure and function. This proposal seeks to combine the analysis tools in FreeSurfer (surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu) created at the Martinos Center in Boston with PET analysis to create atlases of the bind potential of both 5HTT and 5HT4 serotonin receptors. The data to be used comes from the Denmark-based Center for Integrated Molecular Brain Imaging (www.cimbi.org). We will analyze 47 subjects that have both 5HTT and 5HT4 data allowing study of the covariance of these receptors in individuals for the first time. A technique is also proposed to segment the dorsal raphe nucleus from 5-HTT and MRI scans. The functional connectivity of the raphe nucleus will also be studied using this segmentation and resting-state fMRI. We will also create an anatomical probabilistic atlas of the raphe nucleus which can be used to segment raphe in subjects with MRI scans but not PET scans.