Dopamine, Roles Of
This chapter will focus on the mesencephalic do14 pamine centers because they are the most studied, and are thought to be involved in diseases such as Tourette's syndrome, schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease, Huntington’s disease, drug ad17 diction, and depression.
Abstract
5 Dopamine (DA) is a neuromodulator (NEUROMODULATION IN IN6 VERTEBRATE NERVOUS SYSTEMS and SYNAPTIC CURRENTS, NEU7 ROMODULATION AND KINETIC MODELS) that originates from small 8 groups of neurons in the mesencephalon (the ventral tegmental area 9 (A10), the substantia nigra (A9) and A8), and the diencephalon 10 (area A13, A14 and A15). Dopaminergic projections are in general 11 very diffuse and reach large portions of the brain. The time scales 12 of dopamine actions are diverse, from a few hundred milliseconds 13 to several hours. This chapter will focus on the mesencephalic do14 pamine centers because they are the most studied, and because they 15 are thought to be involved in diseases such as Tourette’s syndrome, 16 schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, drug ad17 diction, and depression (see DISEASE: NEURAL NETWORK MODELS 18 and Tzschentke, 2001). These centers are also involved in normal 19 brain functions, such as working memory, reinforcement learning, 20 and attention. This chapter briefly summarizes the main roles of 21 dopamine with respect to recent modeling approaches.