The mesotelencephalic dopamine (DA) system is heterogeneous with respect to nuclei, terminal loci, DA receptor subtypes, electrophysiological characteristics and response patterns, and neuropharmacological response to a range of agents. The majority of mesocortical and mesolimbic DA neurons originate in the ventral tegmental area. Mesostriatal DA neurons originate in substantia nigra pars compa...

It has been hypothesized that the experience of different moral sentiments such as guilt and indignation is underpinned by activation in temporal and fronto-mesolimbic regions and that functional integration between these regions is necessary for the differentiated experience of these moral sentiments. A recent fMRI study revealed that the right superior anterior temporal lobe (ATL) was activat...

The dopaminergic mechanisms that control reward-motivated behavior are the subject of intense study, but it is yet unclear how, in humans, neural activity in mesolimbic reward-circuitry and its functional neuroimaging correlates are related to dopamine release. To address this question, we obtained functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measures of reward-related neural activity and [(11)...

Studies were conducted to determine the impact of self-administered cocaine on extracellular striatal dopamine in four rhesus monkeys. The extent to which external cue conditioning contributed to the effects of cocaine and whether there is activation of striatal dopaminergic neurotransmission during drug-seeking behavior was also examined. Microdialysis measurements were made at 2 min intervals...

The mesolimbic dopamine system, which mediates the rewarding properties of nearly all drugs of abuse, originates in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and sends major projections to both the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and the basolateral amygdala (BLA). To address whether differences occur between neurons that project to these separate areas, retrograde microspheres were injected to either the BLA o...

In multiple sclerosis (MS), monoaminergic systems are altered as a result of both inflammation-dependent reduced synthesis and direct structural damage. Aberrant neurotransmission is increasingly considered major contributor to fatigue pathophysiology. this study, we aimed compare the integrity white matter fibre tracts projecting from brainstem nuclei in group patients with MS (n = 68) healthy...

High-speed chronoamperometry was used to monitor the extracellular concentration of dopamine within the nucleus accumbens, a terminal field of the mesolimbic dopamine system, in freely behaving rats exposed daily, on 6 consecutive days, to one of two naturally reinforcing stimuli; a highly palatable food or sex-related olfactory cues. The animals either were intact or had previously received mi...

The author proposes a new “D-cell hypothesis” for mesolimbic dopamine (DA) hyperactivity of schizophrenia. The “D-cell” is defined as “non-monoaminergic aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase (AADC)-containing cell”. D-cells produce trace amines, such as tyramine and β-phenylethylamine, and may also take up amine precursors and convert them to amines by decarboxylation. Trace amine-associated rece...

BACKGROUND Recent theories addressing mesolimbic dopamine's role in reward processing emphasize two apparently distinct functions, one in reinforcement learning (i.e., prediction error) and another in incentive motivation (i.e., the invigoration of reward seeking elicited by reward-paired cues). Here, we evaluate the latter. METHODS Using fast-scan cyclic voltammetry, we monitored, in real ti...