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Journal of Neurology and Neurorehabilitation Research | Volume 4
November 04-05, 2019 | Melbourne, Australia
Neurology and Neurological Disorders
19
th
International Conference on
J Neurol Neurorehabil Res, Volume 4
A novel Neuroimaging technique to study Neuropathology of Neurological
disorders
Rajendra Badgaiyan
University of Texas Health, USA
B
ecause of poor understanding of the neuropathology, it
is often difficult to diagnose and treat many neurological
conditions. Advances in neuroimaging techniques
have helped us understand these conditions but these
techniques are severely deficient in their ability to detect
and measure neurotransmitters in the live human being.
Since neurotransmitters are key components of the brain
function, an important aspect of the brain function remains
uninvestigated. Investigators are making efforts to develop
techniques that allows accurate detection and measurement
of aneurotransmitter.Wedevelopedoneof those techniques.
It is called neurotransmitter imaging technique or the single
scan dynamic molecular imaging technique (SDMIT). The
techniqueuses positronemission tomography (PET) todetect,
map and measure neurotransmitters released acutely during
cognitive or behavioral processing in the live human brain. It
allows detectionof impairedneurotransmissionat a very early
stage of a disease process to help make an early diagnosis
of a number of neurological conditions that are associated
with dysregulated neurotransmission. The technique
exploits the competition between a neurotransmitter and
its receptor ligand for occupancy of the same receptor site.
In this technique after patients are positioned in the PET
camera, a radio-labeled neurotransmitter ligand is injected
intravenously and the PET data acquisition started. These
data are analyzed using a receptor kinetic model to detect,
map and measure neurotransmitter released dynamically in
differentbrainareas.Patientsareaskedtoperformacognitive,
behavioral or emotional task while in the scanner and the
amount of neurotransmitter released in different brain areas
measured. By comparing the amount with the data acquired
in healthy control volunteers during performance of a similar
task, it is determined whether release of a neurotransmitter
is dysregulated in the patients and whether the dysregulation
is responsible for clinical symptoms. Finding of a significant
dysregulation would confirm diagnosis of many neurological
conditions including, Parkinson’s disease and many forms of
dementia. Since this technique measures neurotransmitter
released under conditions of cognitive stress, it can detect
changes at a very early stage, when dysregulation of is not
expressed at rest but manifests only under conditions of
cognitive overload.
e
:
badgaiyan@gmail.com