TY - JOUR
T1 - GABA decrease is associated with degraded neural specificity in the visual cortex of glaucoma patients
AU - Bang, Ji Won
AU - Parra, Carlos
AU - Yu, Kevin
AU - Wollstein, Gadi
AU - Schuman, Joel S.
AU - Chan, Kevin C.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Ms Tonya Robins, Zena Moore, Jamika Singleton-Garvin and members of the Neuroimaging and Visual Science Laboratory at New York University Grossman School of Medicine for their help with subject recruitment and technical support. This work is supported in part by the National Institutes of Health R01-EY028125, R01-EY013178, and P41-EB017183 (Bethesda, Maryland), BrightFocus Foundation G2016030, G2019103, and G2021001F (Clarksburg, Maryland), and an unrestricted grant from Research to Prevent Blindness to NYU Langone Health Department of Ophthalmology (New York, NY).
Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Ms Tonya Robins, Zena Moore, Jamika Singleton-Garvin and members of the Neuroimaging and Visual Science Laboratory at New York University Grossman School of Medicine for their help with subject recruitment and technical support. This work is supported in part by the National Institutes of Health R01-EY028125, R01-EY013178, and P41-EB017183 (Bethesda, Maryland), BrightFocus Foundation G2016030, G2019103, and G2021001F (Clarksburg, Maryland), and an unrestricted grant from Research to Prevent Blindness to NYU Langone Health Department of Ophthalmology (New York, NY).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).
PY - 2023/12
Y1 - 2023/12
N2 - Glaucoma is an age-related neurodegenerative disease of the visual system, affecting both the eye and the brain. Yet its underlying metabolic mechanisms and neurobehavioral relevance remain largely unclear. Here, using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy and functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated the GABAergic and glutamatergic systems in the visual cortex of glaucoma patients, as well as neural specificity, which is shaped by GABA and glutamate signals and underlies efficient sensory and cognitive functions. Our study shows that among the older adults, both GABA and glutamate levels decrease with increasing glaucoma severity regardless of age. Further, our study shows that the reduction of GABA but not glutamate predicts the neural specificity. This association is independent of the impairments on the retina structure, age, and the gray matter volume of the visual cortex. Our results suggest that glaucoma-specific decline of GABA undermines neural specificity in the visual cortex and that targeting GABA could improve the neural specificity in glaucoma.
AB - Glaucoma is an age-related neurodegenerative disease of the visual system, affecting both the eye and the brain. Yet its underlying metabolic mechanisms and neurobehavioral relevance remain largely unclear. Here, using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy and functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated the GABAergic and glutamatergic systems in the visual cortex of glaucoma patients, as well as neural specificity, which is shaped by GABA and glutamate signals and underlies efficient sensory and cognitive functions. Our study shows that among the older adults, both GABA and glutamate levels decrease with increasing glaucoma severity regardless of age. Further, our study shows that the reduction of GABA but not glutamate predicts the neural specificity. This association is independent of the impairments on the retina structure, age, and the gray matter volume of the visual cortex. Our results suggest that glaucoma-specific decline of GABA undermines neural specificity in the visual cortex and that targeting GABA could improve the neural specificity in glaucoma.
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U2 - 10.1038/s42003-023-04918-8
DO - 10.1038/s42003-023-04918-8
M3 - Article
C2 - 37386293
AN - SCOPUS:85163735021
SN - 2399-3642
VL - 6
JO - Communications Biology
JF - Communications Biology
IS - 1
M1 - 679
ER -