UC Davis neuroscientist Lin Tian and her team, Tommaso Patriarchi, Gerard Broussard and Ruqiang Liang, have developed fluorescence sensors that are opening a new era for the optical recording of dopamine activity in the living brain.
The technology precisely captures where and when dopamine activity occurs in the brain within milliseconds and at the cellular level, producing a high-resolution map of dopamine transients associated with behaviors, such as learning.
A broad application of this tool will further understanding of dopamine activity underlying motivation, reward and movement, and pave the way to discover effective and novel therapeutics for depression, addiction and drug abuse.
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Their work published May 31 as a First Release in the prestigious journal Science . A Q&A with senior researcher Lin Tian is available on the UC Davis Health website at http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu
Science