Pet in psychopharmacology

Emission tomography techniques and, in particular, positron emission tomogr aphy (PET) enable the in vivo study of several physiological and neurochemi cal variables in human subjects using methods originally developed for quan titative autoradiography. In particular, PET allows one to evaluate in huma n subjects: (a) the effect of specific neurochemical challenges on regional brain function at rest or under activation; (b) the activity of neurotrans mitters and the regional expression of specific molecular targets during pa thology including their modulation by drug treatment;, (c) the kinetics of drug disposition and activity directly in the target organ. This is of prim ary interest in the field of biological psychiatry and in psychoactive drug s development, where it is particularly difficult to reproduce human diseas es using animal models in view of the peculiarity of this field and the lar ge heterogeneity of each psychiatric illness also inside the same clinical definition. The aim of this paper is to review the principal strategies and the main results of the use of PET in psychopharmacology. (C) 2001 Academi c Press.