Miniaturized PET scanner can track the brain activity of mobile rats

BBC : A team from the US and Canada has built a miniaturized scanner that can perform positron emission tomography (PET) on mobile, wide-awake rats. The new scanner, which is described in a paper in Nature Methods, is potentially useful because PET is a molecular probe. Thanks to the use of radioactive tracers, PET can locate concentrations in the brain of neurotransmitters and other biochemically significant molecules. Subjecting lab rats to PET scans usually entails immobilizing and anesthetizing them, a restriction that limits the kinds of brain activity that can be studied. The new scanner is small enough and light enough that it can be attached to a rat’s head while the rat moves about.