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. 2018 Jul 24;6(3):80.
doi: 10.3390/biomedicines6030080.

GABA Levels in Left and Right Sensorimotor Cortex Correlate across Individuals

Nicolaas A J Puts  1   2 , Stefanie Heba  3 , Ashley D Harris  4   5   6   7   8 , Christopher John Evans  9 , David J McGonigle  10   11 , Martin Tegenthoff  12 , Tobias Schmidt-Wilcke  13   14 , Richard A E Edden  15   16
Affiliations

GABA Levels in Left and Right Sensorimotor Cortex Correlate across Individuals

Nicolaas A J Puts et al. Biomedicines. .

Abstract

Differences in γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) levels measured with Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy have been shown to correlate with behavioral performance over a number of tasks and cortical regions. These correlations appear to be regionally and functionally specific. In this study, we test the hypothesis that GABA levels will be correlated within individuals for functionally related regions-the left and right sensorimotor cortex. In addition, we investigate whether this is driven by bulk tissue composition. GABA measurements using edited MRS data were acquired from the left and right sensorimotor cortex in 24 participants. T1-weighted MR images were also acquired and segmented to determine the tissue composition of the voxel. GABA level is shown to correlate significantly between the left and right regions (r = 0.64, p < 0.03). Tissue composition is highly correlated between sides, but does not explain significant variance in the bilateral correlation. In conclusion, individual differences in GABA level, which have previously been described as functionally and regionally specific, are correlated between homologous sensorimotor regions. This correlation is not driven by bulk differences in voxel tissue composition.

Keywords: GABA; MRS; bilateral inhibition; individual differences; sensorimotor.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A). Voxel locations. Single-participant example voxels over the left and right sensorimotor cortex. The center of the voxel was placed on the “hand knob”, an anatomical landmark indicating the hand area of the primary motor cortex, with the hand area of primary somatosensory cortex, directly posterior across the central sulcus, also included. The voxels are rotated to be aligned with the edge of the brain; (B). GABA-edited MR spectra from all participants for the left and right sensorimotor cortex. A high-quality GABA peak can be seen at 3 ppm for all participants.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A). Left and right sensorimotor GABA level (tissue-corrected) are correlated (R = 0.64, p < 0.002); (B). Voxel percentages of gray matter (GM%) are strongly correlated between left and right sensorimotor cortex across individuals; (C). GABA levels and %GM do not correlate. Therefore, %GM does not account for significant inter-individual variance in GABA level and the correlation (Figure 2A) is likely to be driven by biochemical differences, rather than by bulk differences in voxel tissue composition.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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