ORIGINAL ARTICLES  NEU­RO­PHAR­MA­COL­O­GY 

The Quarterly Journal of Nuclear Medicine 1998 September;42(3):151-7

Copyright © 2000 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

What are we measuring with PET?

Morgan A. E., Brodie J. D.*, Dewey S. L.

From the Chemistry Department Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York, USA * Psychiatry Department New York University School of Medicine, New York, USA

Positron emis­sion tomog­ra­phy is a med­i­cal imag­ing tech­nique ­that pro­vides ­unique infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing ­many bio­chem­i­cal mech­a­nisms under­ly­ing nor­mal phys­io­log­ic func­tion. With ­respect to the cen­tral ner­vous ­system (CNS), selec­tive radio­lab­eled com­pounds tar­get­ed at spe­cif­ic neu­ro­trans­mit­ter recep­tor ­systems ­reveal infor­ma­tion not ­only con­cern­ing recep­tor dis­tri­bu­tion and enzy­mat­ic activ­ity but neu­ro­trans­mit­ter con­cen­tra­tions as ­well. Recent advanc­es in our under­stand­ing of ­these ­systems may be uti­lized to fur­ther under­stand chang­es in ­brain bio­chem­is­try ­that ­either ­result ­from or pro­duce symp­tom­a­tol­o­gy asso­ciat­ed ­with ­many CNS dis­ease ­states. The abil­ity to meas­ure inter­ac­tions ­between neu­ro­trans­mit­ter ­systems in the ­human ­brain may ­also add to our knowl­edge of ­drug ­side effe­cts and dis­ease pro­gres­sion. While ­many CNS diseas­es ­have ­been ­defined as “neu­ro­trans­mit­ter-spe­cif­ic” in ­nature, sci­en­tif­ic ­data now sug­gests ­that chang­es in mul­ti­ple neu­ro­trans­mit­ter ­systems are evi­dent in the ­brains of ­patients suf­fer­ing ­from ­these clas­si­cal­ly ­described dis­eas­es. PET is a pow­er­ful ­tool ­that can be ­used to exam­ine ­many of ­these chang­es in the liv­ing ­human ­brain.