Zaiyang Long1, 2, Jun Xu1, 2, Jennifer L. McGlothan3, Richard A.E. Edden4, 5, Peter B. Barker4, 5, Tomas R. Guilarte3, Ulrike Dydak1
1School of Health Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States; 2Dept. of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, United States; 3Dept. of Environmental Health Sciences, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY, United States; 4Russell H. Morgan Dept. of Radiology and Radiological Science, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States; 5F.M. Kirby Center for Functional Brain Imaging, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, United States
The baseline difference of brain metabolites, especially of the inhibitory neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), was compared between monkeys and humans using the same imaging sequence on the same type of 3.0T MRI scanner. Short-echo-time spectra from the thalamus and frontal cortex and GABA-edited spectra using MEGA-PRESS from a volume containing the thalamus were acquired in 7 rhesus monkeys and 8 healthy humans. Monkey thalamus showed higher GABA/total creatine (tCr) than human thalamus. Monkeys had lower N-Acetyl-aspartate in the frontal cortex and thalamus. Glutamate and total choline were higher in human frontal cortex, while tCr was higher in human thalamus.