The Application of Neuroimaging Techniques to Drug Development

Neuroimaging is a powerful and innovative tool for studying the pathology of psychiatric diseasesand, more recently, for studying the drugs used in their treatment. Technological advances in imaginghave made it possible to noninvasively extract information from the human brain regarding a drug’s mechanism and site of action. Until now, our understanding of human brain pharmacology has dependedprimarily on indirect assessments or models derived from animal studies. However, the adventof multiple techniques for human brain imaging allows researchers to focus directly on human pharmacologyand brain function. This review outlines available neuroimaging techniques and examineshow these various methods have already been applied to the drug development process, as well as howthey might be applied in the future.