St. James Ballroom
Bayesian Technique for Relating Genetic Polymorphisms to Diffusion Tensor Images of Cocaine Users Brains (303887)
*Tmader Alballa, Virginia Commonwealth University
Keywords: Cocaine, Brain images, genes.
Past investigations utilizing diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) have demonstrated that cocaine use disorder is related with corrupted white matter microstructure. By utilizing Bayesian statistical technique, we demonstrated that the impaired white matter in cocaine use disorder subjects might be related with genetic variables since cocaine is believed to interact with the genetic composition within the pleasure centers of the brain. In this analysis, we explore the association consequences for DTI information between variations of the GAD1a (SNP: rs1978340) and GAD1b (SNP: rs769390) polymorphisms along the human genome in brain and cocaine use. We identify the specific SNP which is expressed in addicted people by finding brain regions that exhibit strong evidence that brain function has been impaired. We employ Bayesian Model Averaging using multiple linear regression models at the voxel level to identify the interaction of the gene expression with cocaine use and its effect on brain activity as measure by DTI.