Dopamine D1 Agonist Activates Temporal Lobe Structures in Primates

Departments of 1 Psychiatry, 2 Neurology and Neurological Surgery, 3 Radiology, and 4 Anatomy and Neurobiology, Washington University School of Medicine; and 5 The Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, St. Louis, Missouri 63110 Black, Kevin J., Tamara Hershey, Mokhtar H. Gado, and Joel S. Perlmutter. Dopamine D 1 Agonist Activates Temporal Lobe Structures in Primates. J. Neurophysiol. 84: 549-557, 2000. Changes in the function of dopamine D 1 -influenced neuronal pathways may be important to the pathophysiology of several human diseases. We recently developed methods for averaging functional imaging data across nonhuman primate subjects; in this study, we apply this method for the first time to map brain responses to experimental dopamine agonists in vivo. Here we report the use of positron emission tomography (PET) in seven normal baboons to measure the regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) responses produced by an acute dose of the dopamine D 1 full agonist SKF82958. The most significant rCBF increases were in bilateral temporal lobe, including amygdala and superior temporal sulcus (6-17%, P