Methods: This work includes water-suppressed echo time and inversion recovery series in healthy volunteers to investigate, respectively, T 2 and T 1 values of peaks in grey matter at 7T.The spectra were fitted in a 2D fashion to a heuristic model of a series of Voigt lines, and the relaxation times were obtained for twelve peaks of interest. Results

Cocaine addiction is characterized by overwhelming craving for the substance, which drives its escalating use despite adverse consequences. Animal models suggest a disrupted glutamate homeostasis in the nucleus accumbens to underlie addiction-like behaviour. After chronic administration of cocaine, rodents show decreased levels of accumbal glutamate, whereas drug-seeking reinstatement is associated with enhanced glutamatergic transmission. However, due to technical obstacles, the role of disturbed glutamate homeostasis for cocaine addiction in humans remains only partially understood, and accordingly, no approved pharmacotherapy exists. Here, we applied a tailored proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy protocol that allows glutamate quantification within the human nucleus accumbens. We found significantly reduced basal glutamate concentrations in the nucleus accumbens in cocaine-addicted (N = 26) compared to healthy individuals (N = 30), and increased glutamate levels during cue-induced craving in cocaine-addicted individuals compared to baseline. These glutamatergic alterations, however, could not be significantly modulated by a short-term challenge of N-acetylcysteine (2400 mg/day on two days). Taken together, our findings reveal a disturbed accumbal glutamate homeostasis as a key neurometabolic feature of cocaine addiction also in humans. Therefore, we suggest the glutamatergic system as a promising target for the development of novel pharmacotherapies, and in addition, as a potential biomarker for a personalised medicine approach in addiction.

Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) can provide in vivo metabolite concentrations in standard concentration units if a reliable reference signal is available. For H MRS in the human brain, typically the signal from the tissue water is used as the (internal) reference signal. However, a concentration determination based on the tissue water signal most often requires a reliable estimate of the water concentration present in the investigated tissue. Especially in clinically interesting cases, this estimation might be difficult. To avoid assumptions about the water in the investigated tissue, the Electric REference To access In vivo Concentrations (ERETIC) method has been proposed. In this approach, the metabolite signal is compared with a reference signal acquired in a phantom and potential coil-loading differences are corrected using a synthetic reference signal. The aim of this study, conducted with a transceiver quadrature head coil, was to increase the accuracy of the ERETIC method by correcting the influence of spatial B inhomogeneities and to simplify the quantification with ERETIC by incorporating an automatic phase correction for the ERETIC signal. Transmit field ( B1+) differences are minimized with a volume-selective power optimization, whereas reception sensitivity changes are corrected using contrast-minimized images of the brain and by adapting the voxel location in the phantom measurement closely to the position measured in vivo. By applying the proposed B correction scheme, the mean metabolite concentrations determined with ERETIC in 21 healthy subjects at three different positions agree with concentrations derived with the tissue water signal as reference. In addition, brain water concentrations determined with ERETIC were in agreement with estimations derived using tissue segmentation and literature values for relative water densities. Based on the results, the ERETIC method presented here is a valid tool to derive in vivo metabolite concentration, with potential advantages compared with internal water referencing in diseased tissue.