title: Studying the brain-gut axis with pharmacological imaging.
abstract: Pharmacological imaging provides great potential both for evaluating the efficacy of new candidate compounds in the treatment of gastrointestinal symptom-based disorders, and for furthering our understanding of the underlying pathophysiology of such disorders. By combining evaluation of symptoms, behavior, and brain responses to relevant stimuli, use of neuroimaging is able to move the study of brain-gut disorders away from more subjective outcomes and emphasize the underlying neural networks involved in symptom generation and treatment. This chapter reviews the state of the art in pharmacological imaging studies, both in human subjects and in animal models of brain-gut interactions.
authors.affiliation: Center for Neurobiology of Stress, Department of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095-6949, USA.
authors.forename: Kirsten
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Tillisch
authors.forename: Zhuo
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kilpatrick
authors.forename: Daniel P
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: Holschneider
authors.forename: Emeran A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Mayer
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000473:pathology; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging; D005767:Gastrointestinal Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology; D041981:Gastrointestinal Tract / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D043183:Irritable Bowel Syndrome / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000378:metabolism; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography; D018040:Receptors, Neurokinin-1 / Q000378:metabolism; D011985:Receptors, Serotonin / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D018040:Receptors, Neurokinin-1; D011985:Receptors, Serotonin