Summary: Researchers discovered a small number of dopaminergic neurons in the brain that are essential for maintaining the balance of important mind functions like reward, cognition, and movement. This breakthrough opens the door to new procedures for medical and neurological disorders like schizophrenia, habit, and Parkinson’s disease.
These cells help control the body’s serotonin pathways, preventing dysregulation that can lead to various disorders. The study represents a major advance in our understanding of how these processes affect mental and motor functions.
Important Information:
- A recently discovered serotonin road balances mind functions, influencing feeling, reward, and motor control.
- Difficulties in this road could lead to disorders like schizophrenia, habit, and Parkinson’s.
- This particular dopamine route is the target of prospective new treatments based on the findings of the study.
Origin: McGill University
A getting from a McGill-led group of scientists may lead to the development of novel treatments for a variety of psychiatric and neurological conditions attributed to dysfunctions in particular serotonin pathways.
For those struggling with a medical condition such as schizophrenia, habit or ADHD, or with neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s condition or Alzheimer’s, there might be good information away.
A small number of dopamine neurons in the brain are responsible for the balance of a number of essential mental functions, including those relating to reward, cognition, and movement, according to the neuroscientists ‘ findings.
Dopamine is a message molecule that frequently comes to mind when you want to enjoy something. But it plays an extremely important part in mood regulation, sleeping and metabolism, as well as in motor and cognitive features. An excessive release of serotonin, induced by certain medicines or habits, is responsible for addiction. Likewise, its absence can cause serious alterations in machine command, as is the case in Parkinson’s disease.
A crucial juggling work
Scientists had formerly identified the characteristics of two different channels and types of serotonin receptors in the cortex: the D1 receptor, which activate cells, and the D2 receptor, which inhibit them. There is a second known class of dopamine receptors that can express both D1 and D2, but no one has been able to determine their specific functionality until now.
The researchers were able to begin understanding these dopamine synapses, which make up just 5 % of the dopamine cells in the brain, by using novel genetic resources to specifically target these serotonin receptors.
This cluster of cells are responsible for the development of a new pathway that is necessary for the balance of neocortical function, according to the experts ‘ findings. They also exhibit unique cellular traits in response to dopamine. It prevents psychostimulant restlessness and ensures motor control in normal biological settings.
Without these neurons, the whole dopamine-controlled brain systems may be active and unable to manage because they balance the two different dopamine receptor types in the brain, which neither facilitate or inhibit the activation of the two previously unknown pathways, says Bruno Giros, a professor in McGill’s department of psychiatry and a researcher at the Douglas Hospital Research Institute. He is the senior author of a recent article on the subject published in , Nature Neuroscience.
Because we’ve been working on this particular project in collaboration with a team at Université Libre de Bruxelles ( ULB ) for almost ten years, this is a very exciting discovery for us.
For Giros, the discovery comes after 30 years of work in the field, including alongside renowned neuroscientist Marc Caron and 2012 Nobel prize winner , Robert J. Lefkowitz , as a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University Medical Centre.
Alban de Kerchove d’Exaerde from the Neurophy Lab at ULB, who participated in the study, says,” We are only in the early stages of working with the tools that we developed to help us identify this pathway.”
” I’m confident that many laboratories will use our tools and will, over time, learn more about the crucial role that this very specific pathway plays in various fields,” Giros continues.
The next step in our research will be to better understand how this third pathway controls motor functions and how it might be impacted by psychiatric disorders.
Funding: This research was supported by grants from the Canadian Institute for Health Research ( CIHR ) and the Graham Boeckh Foundation.
About this news from neuroscience and dopamine research
Author: Katherine Gombay
Source: McGill University
Contact: Katherine Gombay – McGill University
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Closed access.
Bruno Giros and colleagues ‘” D1- and D2-SPN motor motor functions are modulated by Striatal projection neurons that co-express the dopamine D1 and D2 receptors..” Nature Neuroscience
Abstract
D1- and D2-SPN motor motor functions are modulated by Striatal projection neurons that co-express the dopamine D1 and D2 receptors.
Without regard to SPNs that co-express both receptors ( D1/D2-SPNs ), the two striatal efferent pathways are commonly assumed to be involved in motor control.
We developed a method to target these hybrid SPNs in mice, and we show that despite being less prevalent, these SPNs have a significant impact on the motor function of the other two populations.
D1/D2 SPNs have distinctive electrophysiological characteristics and distinctive DA signal integration, and are exclusive to the external globus pallidus. Gain- and loss-of-function experiments indicate that D1/D2-SPNs potentiate the prokinetic and antikinetic functions of D1-SPNs and D2-SPNs, respectively, and restrain the integrated motor response to psychostimulants.
Overall, our findings demonstrate the essential role of this population of D1/D2-coexpressing neurons in orchestrating the fine-tuning of DA regulation in thalamo-cortico-striatal loops.
