Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

This research project is concerned with how brain cells communicate with one another to control the muscles of the body resulting in all of the things we do from going to work, cleaning the garage and meeting friends for dinner. The cells of the brain are organized into sets that connect with one another and via these connections they affect one another's activity. Sometimes the strengths of one set of connections are changed by another set; this is the biological basis of memory. The things we see and do change the connections in the brain so that the brain remembers them. Cell-to-cell communication is done chemically and one of these chemical communicators is dopamine. Dopamine is in a set of communicating fibers that can change the strength of other sets of connections and therefore plays a critical role in memory. Environmental events that we often view as rewarding such as having a nice meal or finding a warm place when we are chilled activate the dopamine system and cause the sets of connections that are activated by those events to strengthen so that in the future those events are more attractive. This research is concerned with how dopamine makes that change. It seems to involve a cascade of molecular events and by studying rats learning about where to find food, for example, it is possible to begin to identify the molecules involved in this cascade. This work will help us to understand how animals including people learn to interact effectively with their environment. When dopamine cells do not work properly in the brain, diseases such as Parkinson's and schizophrenia can result. By better understanding the basic mechanisms of the role of dopamine in learning it will be possible to better treat disorders that result from dopamine not working properly.