Occipital GABA levels in older adults and their relationship to visual perceptual suppression

K Pitchaimuthu; QZ Wu; O Carter; BN Nguyen; S Ahn; GF Egan; AM McKendrick

Journal article

Occipital GABA levels in older adults and their relationship to visual perceptual suppression

K Pitchaimuthu, QZ Wu, O Carter, BN Nguyen, S Ahn, GF Egan, AM McKendrick

Scientific Reports | NATURE PORTFOLIO | Published : 2017

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-14577-5

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Abstract

Several studies have attributed certain visual perceptual alterations in older adults to a likely decrease in GABA (Gamma Aminobutyric Acid) concentration in visual cortex, an assumption based on findings in aged non-human primates. However, to our knowledge, there is no direct evidence for an age-related decrease in GABA concentration in human visual cortex. Here, we estimated visual cortical GABA levels and Glx (combined estimate of glutamate and glutamine) levels using magnetic resonance spectroscopy. We also measured performance for two visual tasks that are hypothesised to be mediated, at least in part, by GABAergic inhibition: spatial suppression of motion and binocular rivalry. Our re..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Olivia Carter Author

Bao Nguyen Author

Allison McKendrick Author

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FROM NEUROSCIENCE TO SOCIETY: A MULTI-DISCIPLINARY STUDY OF HUMAN PERCEPTION AND COGNITION

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Awarded by ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders

Funding Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge Mark Brown and Christian Schuster for the development of the Siemens prototype sequence. We thank Richard McIntyre and his team of radiographers at Monash Biomedical Imaging for helping with MRS acquisition, and Chao Suo for providing software for the brain tissue segmentation. This research was supported by ARC Future Fellowships FT 099030 (A.M.M.) and FT 1400807 (O.C.), ARC Discovery Project 140100157 (A.M.M.), ARC Centre of Excellence (CE140100007), Melbourne International Research Scholarship (K.P.) and Melbourne International Fee Remission Scholarship (K.P.).