“The brain is really like a black box,” says Chao Zheng.
Researchers can easily study the brain’s inputs and outputs — for example, sensory stimuli and movements or actions, respectively — but what happens within the organ to convert incoming signals into the appropriate outcomes has remained mysterious.
As a scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Zheng aims to develop new tools to make those hidden processes visible. His research brings together radiochemistry, molecular imaging and neuroscience to help researchers better detect, track, understand neurological disease and, ultimately, improve how it is treated.
His method of choice is positron emission tomography (PET), an imaging technique that uses radioactive compounds called radioligands to visualize specific biological processes in the body. While magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and CT scans mainly show structural changes, PET imaging allows clinicians and researchers to see how specific proteins and pathways are functioning, making it a powerful tool to detect and monitor disease.
“A main focus of my lab is developing new radioligands for imaging the brain,” says Zheng, who holds appointments with Temerty Medicine’s departments of psychiatry and pharmacology and toxicology and U of T’s Department of Chemistry.
Currently, his lab is using this approach to other neurological disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis (MS).
To read more about this story, visit the Temerty Faculty of Medicine.