Imaging techniques for neuropharmacology

[thegreenhand]

What does everyone consider to be useful neuroimaging techniques when studying drugs?

fMRI gets all the work now but it really is lacking in regards to temporal and spatial resolution. And that doesnt even include the dead salmon conundrum

 

[Skorpio]

What part of the process? Early on when you can region specifically encode fluorescent proteins using cre, techniques like two photon imaging are super powerful for measuring neuro transmitter release (either directly or by a calcium indicator).

Of course you can't make cre humans yet, so other methods are used.

 

[thegreenhand]

Any part of the process really. I was more so just asking what does everyone find to be interesting methods of studying the brain.

Personally I think that DTI imaging (white matter tracts) is not used enough. I would love to see before and after images if someone who has used say LSD a few times or alcohol for 3 weeks and seeing how connectivity changes

 

[sekio]

how about good old PET? surely there are some cyberpunk points gained by the use of radioactive hallucinogens?

 

[thegreenhand]

Lol cyberpunk points for sure

If I remember correctly PET has a bit lower resolution than fMRI but for our purposes in neuropharmacology being able to see it a drug binds more in specific areas could easily outweigh this.

The main I’d like to see personally is less “neurophrenology” where instead of reading bumps on the skull like in the past nowadays we try to assign meaning to rather minute differences fMRI data. Like right now the standard fMRI machine has about 630,000 neurons per voxel (like a 3D pixel). That many neurons in one unit really can’t tell you anything about the algorithms going on underneath. But all the funding still goes to fMRI studies because they’re easy to conduct and publish. Gotta love the machine of academia amirite