• Neuroscience · Oct 2016

    GABA levels in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex during the viewing of appetitive and disgusting food images.

    • Caterina Padulo, Stefano Delli Pizzi, Laura Bonanni, Richard A E Edden, Antonio Ferretti, Daniele Marzoli, Raffaella Franciotti, Valerio Manippa, Marco Onofrj, Gianna Sepede, Armando Tartaro, Luca Tommasi, Stefano Puglisi-Allegra, and Alfredo Brancucci.
    • Department of Psychological Sciences, Health, and the Territory, University "G. d'Annunzio" of Chieti-Pescara, Italy; Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, University "G. d'Annunzio" of Chieti-Pescara, Italy. Electronic address: caterina.padulo@unich.it.
    • Neuroscience. 2016 Oct 1; 333: 114-22.

    AbstractCharacterizing how the brain appraises the psychological dimensions of reward is one of the central topics of neuroscience. It has become clear that dopamine neurons are implicated in the transmission of both rewarding information and aversive and alerting events through two different neuronal populations involved in encoding the motivational value and the motivational salience of stimuli, respectively. Nonetheless, there is less agreement on the role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the related neurotransmitter release during the processing of biologically relevant stimuli. To address this issue, we employed magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), a non-invasive methodology that allows detection of some metabolites in the human brain in vivo, in order to assess the role of the vmPFC in encoding stimulus value rather than stimulus salience. Specifically, we measured gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and, with control purposes, Glx levels in healthy subjects during the observation of appetitive and disgusting food images. We observed a decrease of GABA and no changes in Glx concentration in the vmPFC in both conditions. Furthermore, a comparatively smaller GABA reduction during the observation of appetitive food images than during the observation of disgusting food images was positively correlated with the scores obtained to the body image concerns sub-scale of Body Uneasiness Test (BUT). These results are consistent with the idea that the vmPFC plays a crucial role in processing both rewarding and aversive stimuli, possibly by encoding stimulus salience through glutamatergic and/or noradrenergic projections to deeper mesencephalic and limbic areas.Copyright © 2016 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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