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Association between human gray matter metabotropic glutamate receptor-5 availability in vivo and white matter properties: a [11C]ABP688 PET and diffusion tensor imaging study

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Abstract

Excitatory corticofugal projections in the subcortical white matter (WM) convey signals arising from local neuronal activity in the gray matter (GM). We hypothesized that metabotropic glutamate receptor-5 (mGluR5) availability in GM, as a surrogate marker for local glutamatergic neuronal activity, correlates with WM properties in healthy brain. We examined the relationship in healthy individuals between GM mGluR5 availability measured in vivo using [11C]ABP688 positron emission tomography (PET) and WM properties measured as fractional anisotropy (FA) using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Twenty-three healthy volunteers underwent this multimodal imaging. We calculated mGluR5 availability, [11C]ABP688 binding potential (BPND), using the simplified reference tissue model, and generated DTI FA maps using FMRIB’s Diffusion Toolbox (FDT) along with Tract-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS). To investigate the relationship between mGluR5 availability and FA, we performed voxel-wise and region of interest (ROI)-based analyses. The voxel-wise analysis showed significant positive correlations between the whole cerebral GM [11C]ABP688 BPND and the FA in widespread WM regions including the corpus callosum body, internal capsule, and corona radiata (FWE corrected p < 0.05). The ROI-based analysis also revealed significant positive correlations (Bonferroni-corrected threshold p < 0.00021) between [11C]ABP688 BPND in the frontal and parietal cortical GM and FA in the internal capsule (anterior limb and retrolenticular part). Using a novel multimodal imaging interrogation, we provide the first evidence that GM mGluR5 availability is significantly positively associated with WM properties in healthy subjects. Future comparison studies could determine whether this relationship is perturbed in neuropsychiatric disorders with dysregulated mGluR5 signaling.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Brain Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (2016M3C7A1914451). We thank all the participants who took part in this study, and Eun-Sook Kim for her research coordination. We thank Inglewood Biomedical Imaging for valuable help in manuscript editing.

Funding

This research was supported by the Brain Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (2016M3C7A1914451).

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The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Gachon University Gil Medical Center, and all procedures used in the study were conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research ethics committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Kim, S.E., Joo, YH., Son, YD. et al. Association between human gray matter metabotropic glutamate receptor-5 availability in vivo and white matter properties: a [11C]ABP688 PET and diffusion tensor imaging study. Brain Struct Funct 225, 1805–1816 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-020-02094-7

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