Support:Documents:Examples:Estimate Change of Neurotransmitter

Overview

The changes of endogenous neurotransmitter by PET scanning after a stimulus has been proved with different approaches. In stead of detecting the increase or decrease of neurotransmitter, it is important to characterize the temporal change of a neurotransmitter after a stimulus. Morris proposed the new technique for capturing the dynamic changes of a neurotransmitter after a stimulus and demonstrated the ability of this method to reconstruct the temporal characteistics of an enhance in neurotransmitter concentration.

Here we present a general model of ntPET, which can be simplified to Morris' model.

Generally, there are two separate PET scans: one for the rest condition (without any stimuli) and the other for the activation conditon (after a stimulus). Cp is the pasma concentration of tracer for the first scan (the "rest" condtion), F is free (unbound) tracer and B is bound tracer. Cp2 is the pasma concentration of tracer for the second scan (the "activation" condtion), F2 is free (unbound) tracer and B2 is bound tracer. F(en) and B(en) are free and bound neurotransmitter released by endogenous ligand.