Abstract #4209

Elevated Glycine and Glutamate Metabolite Levels in Patients with First-Episode Psychotic Disorders Measured by TE-averaged PRESS at 4 T

Sang-Young Kim^1,2, Marc J. Kaufman^1,3, Bruce M. Cohen⁴, Joseph T. Coyle⁵, Fei Du^1,2, and Dost Öngür²

¹McLean Imaging Center, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA, United States, ²Psychotic Disorders Division, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA, United States, ³Translational Imaging Laboratory, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA, United States, ⁴Program for Neuropsychiatric Research, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA, United States, ⁵Laboratory for Psychiatric and Molecular Neuroscience, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Belmont, MA, United States

In this work, we present the advantage of TE-averaged PRESS approach to reliably quantify brain glutamate and glycine levels in vivo in patients with psychosis. Since glutamtergic dysregulation and NMDA receptor hypofunction are implicated in the pathophysiology of major psychiatric conditions, non-invasive in vivo assessments of glutamate and its NMDA receptor modulator, glycine, would be of great importance. We found significantly elevated glutamate and glycine levels in the anterior cingulate cortex and parieto-occipital cortex of patients with first-episode psychosis as compared to healthy controls, suggesting increased brain glutamatergic activity with compensatory attempts to correct for NMDA receptor hypofunction.

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