The GABAergic System: A Metabolomic Approach

Despite modern technology, little is known about brain function and its relationship to the underlying neuronal activities in the presence of a mental workload. This strongly stands when attempting to dissect the nature of the functional responses to inhibitory modulation in the brain.This book therefore presents a metabolomic approach to study inhibitory GABAergic neurotransmission using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy. It encompasses a metabolic fingerprint which maps targeted activity of the GABAergic system using multivariate statistics. This book introduces a new approach to the study of brain function, a methodology which has great potential for use in high throughput screening of new pharmacological tools. This also provides a fundamental basis for the interpretation of in vivo pharmacological and functional magnetic resonance imaging studies: GABAergic modulation has distinct metabolic patterns which should be taken into account when evaluating functional imaging data involving modulation of neuronal inhibition.