Kamar Abdullahi

Functional magnetic resonance spectroscopy (fMRS) is a method of measuring dynamic changes in brain metabolites in activated areas of the brain during tasks. Previous studies have observed imbalances of neurotransmitters such as glutamate and GABA in people with psychosis (PwP) using resting-state MRS, but it is not clear how closely these differences may be linked to the dynamic neural processes that are thought to be disrupted in schizophrenia. In this study, we measured multiple metabolites during a visual task where both PwP (n = 4) and healthy controls (n = 11) were asked to compare the brightness of two different dots while focused on a fixation point at the center of the screen. The task was divided into two blocks; one with a blank background and the other with a visual stimulus of flickering stripes placed behind the dots. The data collected was then pre-processed to remove artifacts and fitted with a linear combination model procedure to quantify 16 metabolites by fitting the various spectral peaks simultaneously. Although glutamate values were numerically larger during visual stimulation versus blank (as expected), this difference was small and did not reach statistical significance. Future analyses will include additional subjects as data collection is ongoing. We also plan to look for functional changes in additional metabolites (e.g., aspartate), as suggested by previous fMRS studies.