Dopamine News and Research

Latest Dopamine News and Research

Brain organoids show goal-directed learning in control task

Imagine balancing a ruler vertically in the palm of your hand: you have to constantly pay attention to the angle of the ruler and make many small adjustments to make sure it doesn't fall over. It takes practice to get good at this.

19 Feb 2026

Timing matters more than repetition in learning

More than a century ago, Pavlov trained his dog to associate the sound of a bell with food. Ever since, scientists assumed the dog learned this through repetition: The more times the dog heard the bell and then got fed, the better it learned that the sound meant food would soon follow.

17 Feb 2026

ARVCF gene deletion leads to abnormalities in reward behavior

The ventral tegmental area (VTA) is a key brain region for dopamine production and the regulation of reward-related behaviors.

13 Feb 2026

Parkinson's-related weight loss reflects a failure of the body's energy-producing pathways

Weight loss is a well-recognized but poorly understood non-motor feature of Parkinson's disease (PD). Many patients progressively lose weight as the disease advances, often alongside worsening motor symptoms and quality of life.

13 Feb 2026

Adjunctive brexpiprazole boosts schizophrenia patients' information processing speed

Cognitive impairment, including decreased attention and memory, remains one of the most disabling aspects of schizophrenia, affecting social life of patients.

12 Feb 2026

Review links betel nut addiction to cancer, heart disease, and metabolic risks

This review examines the epidemiology, health risks, neurobiological mechanisms, and emerging treatments related to betel nut addiction worldwide. It highlights strong links with oral cancer, cardiometabolic disease, and addiction pathways while noting limited established therapies and the need for coordinated public health strategies.

11 Feb 2026

Stem cell implants aim to restore dopamine in Parkinson’s disease

Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects more than one million people in the United States, with approximately 90,000 new cases diagnosed each year.

5 Feb 2026

Exploring how prenatal alcohol and stress affect rhesus monkey offspring in adulthood

New in JNeurosci, Mary Schneider and Alexander Converse, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, led an interdisciplinary study to explore how prenatal alcohol and stress exposure affect rhesus monkey offspring in adulthood.

2 Feb 2026

Neural circuits in flies provide insights into human eating

Why do we sometimes keep eating even when we're full and other times turn down food completely? Why do we crave salty things at certain times, and sweets at other times? The answers, according to new neuroscience research at the University of Delaware, may lie in a tiny brain in an organism you might not expect.

30 Jan 2026

Gut problems may shape Parkinson’s disease progression through the gut-brain axis

This narrative review examines how gastrointestinal dysfunction, gut dysbiosis, and altered gut-brain axis signaling are closely associated with the onset and progression of Parkinson’s disease. It synthesizes evidence supporting a possible bottom-up disease model while highlighting integrative, gut-targeted strategies as adjuncts to symptom management rather than proven disease-modifying therapies.

27 Jan 2026

Tiny plastic particles may interfere with brain processes implicated in Parkinson’s disease

Micro- and nanoplastics are increasingly detected in human tissues, including the brain, and experimental evidence suggests they can interact with biological pathways central to Parkinson’s disease pathology. This review synthesises mechanistic data indicating that plastic particles may influence protein aggregation, neuroinflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and the gut–brain axis, while emphasising the need for prospective human studies.

26 Jan 2026

The neuroscience of motivation-driven memory retention

Researchers from the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS Medicine), and Duke University have proposed a neuroscience framework explaining how different types of motivation fundamentally reshape what and how the brain remembers.

21 Jan 2026

Researchers discover a biochemical route that plays role in Parkinson's disease

About 1 million Americans suffer from Parkinson's disease, with around 90,000 new cases diagnosed each year, according to the Parkinson's Foundation.

20 Jan 2026

Cannabidiol could become a therapeutic tool for fetal alcohol spectrum disorder

Cannabidiol (CBD) could become a therapeutic tool to address some of the most frequent and disabling consequences of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), a condition caused by alcohol exposure during pregnancy.

14 Jan 2026

Fruit fly study identifies genes regulating dopamine and sleep

Dopamine in the brain influences movement, learning, motivation and sleep. In humans, problems with dopamine are linked to conditions like Parkinson's disease, depression and sleep disorders.

13 Jan 2026

Researchers uncover unexpected role of the cerebellum in schizophrenia's negative symptoms

Apathy, social withdrawal, and loss of motivation — the so-called ''negative'' symptoms of schizophrenia — are among the most disabling and hardest to treat.

13 Jan 2026

Rare sugars activate metabolic signaling to reduce alcohol consumption in mice

While investigating the FGF21-oxytocin-dopamine system, a mechanism that regulates sugar appetite, a team of researchers at Kyoto University noticed reports suggesting that the protein FGF21 may regulate alcohol ingestion.

12 Jan 2026

Parkinson’s disease may stem from iron starvation rather than iron overload

This perspective argues that Parkinson’s disease may involve functional iron deficiency, where bioavailable iron is limited despite normal or elevated total iron in the brain. The authors propose that iron sequestration, not iron toxicity alone, may impair dopamine synthesis and neuronal survival.

6 Jan 2026

TAAR1 mutation impairs brain signaling in schizophrenia

A genetic mutation passed from mother to children in families affected by schizophrenia has now been shown to completely silence a brain receptor that pharmaceutical companies are racing to target with new drugs.

6 Jan 2026