rewards tagged posts

New study finds dopamine neurons are more diverse than previously thought. Although there is a long-standing, common assumption that most – if not all – dopamine neurons solely respond to rewards or reward-predicting cues, researchers instead discovered that one genetic subtype fires when the body moves and does not respond to rewards at all. The discovery could help explain why loss of dopamine neurons leads to Parkinson’s disease.

In a new Northwestern University-led study, researchers identified and recorded from three genetic subtypes of dopamine neurons in the midbrain region of a mouse model.

Although there is ...

A rat enjoys some chocolatey liquid. Ellen Ambrose, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Johns Hopkins neuroscientists believe they have figured out how some mammals’ brains—in this case, rats—solve navigational problems. If there’s a “reward” at the end of the trip, like the chocolatey drink used in their study, specialized neurons in the hippocampus of the brain “replay” the route taken to get it, but backward. And the greater the reward, the more often the rats’ brains replay it. The finding suggests both the presence and magnitude of rewards influence how and how well the hippocampus forms memories.

“We’ve long known that the brains of awake animals have these replay events when they pause in their travels...