Dopamine, behavior, and addiction

Journal of Biomedical Science

Chloe J. Jordan¹  Roy A. Wise² 

[1] Division of Alcohol, Drugs and Addiction, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, McLean Hospital, 115 Mill Street, 02478, Belmont, MA, USA;Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Drug Abuse, 250 Mason Lord Drive, Baltimore, MD, USA;Behavior Genetics Laboratory, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 115 Mill Street, 02478, Belmont, MA, USA;

关键词: Dopamine;    Behavior;    Addiction;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12929-021-00779-7

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

Addictive drugs are habit-forming. Addiction is a learned behavior; repeated exposure to addictive drugs can stamp in learning. Dopamine-depleted or dopamine-deleted animals have only unlearned reflexes; they lack learned seeking and learned avoidance. Burst-firing of dopamine neurons enables learning—long-term potentiation (LTP)—of search and avoidance responses. It sets the stage for learning that occurs between glutamatergic sensory inputs and GABAergic motor-related outputs of the striatum; this learning establishes the ability to search and avoid. Independent of burst-firing, the rate of single-spiking—or “pacemaker firing”—of dopaminergic neurons mediates motivational arousal. Motivational arousal increases during need states and its level determines the responsiveness of the animal to established predictive stimuli. Addictive drugs, while usually not serving as an external stimulus, have varying abilities to activate the dopamine system; the comparative abilities of different addictive drugs to facilitate LTP is something that might be studied in the future.

【 授权许可】

CC BY