Publication Date:
2004-03-27
Description:
Dopamine neurons play a key role in reward-related behaviors. Reward coding theories predict that dopamine neurons will be inhibited by or will not respond to aversive stimuli. Paradoxically, between 3 and 49% of presumed dopamine neurons are excited by aversive stimuli. We found that, in the ventral tegmental area of anesthetized rats, the population of presumed dopamine neurons that are excited by aversive stimuli is actually not dopaminergic. The identified dopamine neurons were inhibited by the aversive stimulus. These findings suggest that dopamine neurons are specifically excited by reward and that a population of nondopamine neurons is excited by aversive stimuli.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Ungless, Mark A -- Magill, Peter J -- Bolam, J Paul -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2004 Mar 26;303(5666):2040-2.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Medical Research Council Anatomical Neuropharmacology Unit, Department of Pharmacology, University of Oxford, Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3TH, UK. mark.ungless@zoo.ox.ac.uk〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15044807" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Action Potentials
;
Animals
;
Dopamine/*physiology
;
Electrophysiology
;
Microelectrodes
;
*Neural Inhibition
;
Neurons/*physiology
;
Pain/*physiopathology
;
Physical Stimulation
;
Rats
;
Reward
;
Ventral Tegmental Area/cytology/*physiology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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