Clifford M Cassidy, Fabio A Zucca, Ragy R Girgis, Seth C Baker, Jodi J Weinstein, Madeleine E Sharp, Chiara Bellei, Alice Valmadre, Nora Vanegas, Lawrence S Kegeles, Gary Brucato, Un Jung Kang, David Sulzer, Luigi Zecca, Anissa Abi-Dargham, Guillermo Horga
Neuromelanin-sensitive MRI (NM-MRI) purports to detect the content of neuromelanin (NM), a product of dopamine metabolism that accumulates with age in dopamine neurons of the substantia nigra (SN). Interindividual variability in dopamine function may result in varying levels of NM accumulation in the SN; however, the ability of NM-MRI to measure dopamine function in nonneurodegenerative conditions has not been established. Here, we validated that NM-MRI signal intensity in postmortem midbrain specimens correlated with regional NM concentration even in the absence of neurodegeneration, a prerequisite for its use as a proxy for dopamine function...
March 12, 2019: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America