Laboratory of Molecular Neuroimaging

Mission Statement

The mission of the Program of Neuroimaging Research on Addictive Disorders of the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA is to discover fundamental mechanisms that link addictive disorders (alcoholism, drug abuse) and their behavioral correlates with neurochemical phenotype and genotype in healthy individuals and in those who suffer from neuropsychiatric diseases. For this purpose, noninvasive brain-imaging techniques, especially positron emission tomography (PET), as well as structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), are applied in studies of human subjects and laboratory animals. The Laboratory’s work focuses along two major lines, the first being research on the biological basis of addictive disorders, and the second being the development of new probes for noninvasive imaging, including methods to visualize gene expression.

Ongoing studies use PET to delineate the circuits that contribute to emotional and cognitive deficits in methamphetamine abusers undergoing withdrawal; PET is also used to determine how genetic predisposition influences the brain’s response to alcohol. In addition, fMRI is being used to investigate the influence of tobacco smoking on brain mechanisms involved in cognitive functioning and mood state. In parallel with these functional studies in human volunteers, synthetic chemistry and radiochemistry efforts focus on development of specific, high affinity, and safe radioligands for external imaging of neuroreceptors, particularly the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor.