Activation induced changes in GABA: Functional MRS at 7T with MEGA-sLASER
Abstract
Functional magnetic resonance spectroscopy (fMRS) has been used to assess the dynamic metabolic responses of the brain to a physiological stimulus non-invasively. However, only limited information on the dynamic functional response of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain, is available. We aimed to measure the activation-induced changes in GABA unambiguously using a spectral editing method, instead of the conventional direct detection techniques used in previous fMRS studies. The Mescher-Garwood-semi-localised by adiabatic selective refocusing (MEGA-sLASER) sequence was developed at 7T to obtain the time course of GABA concentration without macromolecular contamination. A significant decrease (-12+/-5%) in the GABA to total creatine ratio (GABA/tCr) was observed in the motor cortex during a period of 10min of hand-clenching, compared to an initial baseline level (GABA/tCr =0.11+/-0.02) at rest. An increase in the Glx (glutamate and glutamine) to tCr ratio was also found, which is in agreement with previous findings. In contrast, no significant changes in NAA/tCr and tCr were detected. With consistent and highly efficient editing performance for GABA detection and the advantage of visually identifying GABA resonances in the spectra, MEGA-sLASER is demonstrated to be an effective method for studying of dynamic changes in GABA at 7T. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Author
Citations
Altmetric:
Date
2017
Type
Article
Subject
Brain, Magnetic resonance spectroscopy, Neuroimaging
Collections
Citation
Chen, C., Sigurdsson, H.P., Pepes, S.E., Auer, D.P., Morris, P.G., Morgan, P.S., Gowland, P.A. and Jackson, S.R. (2017) 'Activation induced changes in GABA: Functional MRS at 7T with MEGA-sLASER', NeuroImage, 156, pp. 207-213. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.05.044.
Journal / Source Title
DOI
PMID
Publisher
Elsevier Ltd