Carlos Paladini and Gary Aston-Jones are studying the contribution of the phosphoinositide (PI) signaling pathway to the responses of dopaminergic (DA) neurons of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) in slices and in vivo, and during reinforcement learning. The bursts of DA cell activity that underlie reinforcement learning are modulated by psychostimulants that act via G-protein coupled receptors coupled to the PI-signaling pathway. These experiments focus on three questions, each at different levels of the system: 1) how do PI-coupled receptors influence the DA neuron firing pattern of single cells; 2) which afferent brain nuclei are involved in generation of the firing pattern and the modulation of these receptors within the network; and 3) how do PI-coupled receptors alter reward-based learning and memory at the behavioral level. These experiments reconstruct events that occur during psychostimulant-induced modulation of reinforcement learning from the subcellular level to the intact network.
2-D
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