Researchers, including a Rutgers professor, have gained a clearer view of the biological changes associated with schizophrenia by directly measuring synaptic connections in the living human brain. The team used specialized positron emission tomography (PET) imaging to examine these crucial points of communication between brain cells.
The study, published in Molecular Psychiatry, was led by senior authors Avram Holmes, associate professor of psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and core faculty member of the Center for Advanced Human Brain Imaging Research within the Rutgers Brain Health Institute, and Rajiv Radhakrishnan, associate professor of psychiatry and radiology and biomedical imaging at Yale University. First author Sidhant Chopra, formerly a postdoctoral fellow in the Holmes Lab, is a McKenzie Research Fellow at Orygen, Australia's Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, and the University of Melbourne in Australia.
Measuring the Brain's Synaptic Connections
Synapses are tiny junctions that allow brain cells to communicate with one another across neural circuits. Problems involving these connections are believed to play a role in the cognitive and emotional symptoms of schizophrenia. Until now, however, scientists have had a limited understanding of exactly where synaptic loss occurs in the brains of living people because conventional imaging methods such as magnetic resonance imaging cannot specifically measure synapses.
