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Published:
Journal of Analytical Toxicology,
ISSN 0146-4760,
Volume 25, Number 5, July/August, pp. 419-424
fMRI: A New Tool for the In Vivo Localization of Drug Actions
in the Brain
Elliot
A. Stein
Departments of Psychiatry, Pharmacology, Cellular Biology, Neurobiology,
and Anatomy and the Biophysics Research Institute, Medical College of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a still-emerging,
non-invasive neuroimaging tool, has been applied to a wide range of questions
in sensory, motor control, and cognitive psychology. Only more recently has
it been applied to understand the sites and mechanisms of action of pharmacological
agents within the human CNS. However, in so doing, a new set of problems and
concerns surrounding the technique must be addressed because of the unique transduction
mechanisms (both physiological and biophysical) that exist to produce the fMRI
signal from the underlying neuronal activity. Experimental design and control
issues become paramount in performing fMRI pharmacological protocols and in
signal interpretation. With these caveats, the use of pharmacological agents
with fMRI is likely to greatly increase in the near term as new questions about
both brain physiology and neuropharmacological mechanisms become addressable
for the first time. Examples are given using nicotine and cocaine as a prototypical
agents.
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