REVIEW ARTICLE GABA-Based Evaluation of Neurologic Conditions: MR Spectroscopy

SUMMARY: GABA serves as a major neurotransmitter of the brain and functions mainly to inhibit neural excitatory activity. Disruption of the GABAergic processes appears to occur in various neuro-logic and psychiatric conditions, including epilepsy, mood disorders, motor disorders such as focal dystonia and stiff-person syndrome, sleep disorders, neuroplasticity, and drug and alcohol depen-dence. These concentration differences may be ascertained by using MR spectroscopy to provide information on the concentration of different metabolites. This review briefly discusses advances in MR spectroscopy methods and explores the application of this technique to detect changes in GABA due to disease processes and medication-induced effects. ABBREVIATIONS AED antiepileptic drug; GABA -aminobutyric acid; GABAAR -amino butyric acid A receptor; GABABR -amino butyric acid B receptor; GABA-T GABA transami-nase; GAD glutamic acid decarboxylase; J-PRESS a combined 2D point-resolved spectroscopy sequence; SSRI selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor The importance of GABA first emerged from experimentalwork in the 1950s by Eugene Roberts, identified from ex-tracts of mouse neuroblastoma; the primary inhibitory neu-rotransmitter activity of GABAwas postulated only years afte