Dr. Gabriel Dichter, a Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities (CIDD) Investigator, was recently awarded a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to evaluate dopaminergic functioning during reward processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorder.
The UNC team includes Dr. Jessica Kinard (postdoctoral fellow), Dr. Weili Lin (BRIC Director), Dr. Zibo Li (Cyclotron and Radiochemistry Research Program Director), Dr.
Heather Cody Hazlett (CIDD faculty), and Dr. Joe Piven (CIDD Director). The project represents a collaboration with Dr. Jacob Hooker, the Director of Radiochemistry at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital.
This study represents the first ever NIH-funded effort at UNC to perform simultaneous PET/MR and also represents the first PET study of dopamine signaling in autism using the radiotracer raclopride.
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