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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University.

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Interior View
July/August 2007
Photograph ©Julie Brown

There are many high-tech ways to watch the body at work. Yale researchers are currently using this NeuroFocus SPECT scanner, one of only five in the world, to search the brain for chemical needles in a molecular haystack.

SPECT stands for single-photon emission computed tomography. To image the brain with SPECT, researchers inject a radioactive chemical tracer into a subject’s bloodstream and then, with the camera, watch the tracer’s journey to the brain. Physicians routinely use SPECT scans to detect tumors, locate the epicenters of seizures, and map the extent of stroke damage. But Yale is applying the NeuroFocus scanner in basic research. Scientists use it on animal subjects to test new radioactive tracers for targeting specific brain chemicals that, in humans, are involved in neuropsychiatric conditions as diverse as depression, schizophrenia, and drug addiction.

“There are millions of chemicals in the brain, but we have only a few tracers available for human use," says Julie K. Staley, psychiatry professor and director of SPECT imaging. "We send in specific keys and, with this scanner, make sure they go to the right locks.”  

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