Dopamine News and Research

Latest Dopamine News and Research

Highly sensitive dopamine detector can aid in early diagnosis of several disorders

A supersensitive dopamine detector can help in the early diagnosis of several disorders that result in too much or too little dopamine, according to a group led by Penn State and including Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and universities in China and Japan.

7 Aug 2020

Sweet-taste perception changes from childhood to adulthood

Compared with adults, children and adolescents are less sensitive to the sweet taste and need 40% more sucrose in a solution for them to detect the taste of sugar, a new study found.

3 Aug 2020

15 young scientists receive Damon Runyon Fellowship Award to pursue cancer research

Grants totaling nearly $3.5 million give early career investigators independence to pursue brave and bold cancer research.

31 Jul 2020

Botox injections can reduce depression, shows study

Botox, a medication derived from a bacterial toxin, is commonly injected to ease wrinkles, migraines, muscle spasms, excessive sweating and incontinence.

30 Jul 2020

Leftover fermented barley may reduce animals’ stress, improve pork quality

Tastier pork comes from pigs that eat the barley left over after making the Japanese liquor shochu. A team of professional brewers and academic farmers state that nutrients in the leftover fermented barley may reduce the animals' stress, resulting in better tasting sirloin and fillets.

21 Jul 2020

Dopaminergic neurones behave differently in different animals, shows study

Animals have an innate preference for certain scents and tastes. Attractive scents are linked to things like good food.

16 Jul 2020

Dopamine therapy improves cognitive function in patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's

A study supported by the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation and published today in JAMA Network Open provides the first evidence that rotigotine, a drug that acts on dopamine transmission in the brain, improves cognitive function in patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease.

15 Jul 2020

Study sheds new light on neurobiological processes that control drug-related adaptations

The lab of Jeremy Day, Ph.D., at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has used single-nucleus RNA sequencing approaches to compare transcriptional responses to acute cocaine in 16 unique cell populations from a portion of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, or NAc.

10 Jul 2020

Dopamine neurons regulate the internal decision-making process

In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana must choose his grail "wisely", as a poor choice spells instant death.

7 Jul 2020

Study may help develop better treatment strategies for cannabis dependence

Researchers at Center for BrainHealth, part of The University of Texas at Dallas, recently examined underlying brain networks in long-term cannabis users to identify patterns of brain connectivity when the users crave or have a desire to consume cannabis.

2 Jul 2020

Parkinson's disease breakthrough seen in mouse model

Researchers from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine have found a way to create new neurons in a mouse model of Parkinson's disease. The severely debilitating and progressive neurodegenerative disease, as of now, has no cure, and this breakthrough could help hundreds of thousands of patients with the condition feel experts.

25 Jun 2020

GW researchers awarded $2.2 million to study chronic stress

The National Institutes of Health has awarded $2.2 million to researchers at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences for a study on chronic stress.

25 Jun 2020

New therapeutic approach for Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases

Xiang-Dong Fu, PhD, has never been more excited about something in his entire career. He has long studied the basic biology of RNA, a genetic cousin of DNA, and the proteins that bind it. But a single discovery has launched Fu into a completely new field: neuroscience.

25 Jun 2020

New methods may contribute to future structure-based drug design

Many pharmaceuticals work by targeting what are known as "G-protein-coupled receptors". In a new study, scientists from Uppsala University describe how they have been able to predict how special molecules that can be used in new immunotherapy against cancer bind to these receptors.

24 Jun 2020

Researchers identify neural mechanism for associative learning in fruit flies

A research team from The University of Texas at El Paso has made strides in understanding how memories are formed through the brain mechanisms of fruit flies, findings that could enhance our understanding of brain disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder and substance addiction, according to an article published in the highly renowned Journal of Neuroscience.

24 Jun 2020

Problems in how the brain recognizes and processes novel information underlie psychosis

Problems in how the brain recognizes and processes novel information lie at the root of psychosis, researchers from the University of Cambridge and King's College London have found.

23 Jun 2020

Study highlights the lasting positive effect of a reward on memory

How does our memory work and how can we optimize its mechanisms on a daily basis? This question is at the heart of many neuroscience research projects.

17 Jun 2020

Stanford researchers test the first biohybrid version of artificial synapse

In 2017, Stanford University researchers presented a new device that mimics the brain's efficient and low-energy neural learning process.

15 Jun 2020

Study shows how a nervous system coordinates distinct behavioral outputs

For a nematode worm, a big lawn of the bacteria that it eats is a great place for it to disperse its eggs so that each hatchling can emerge into a nutritive environment.

11 Jun 2020

Protein design can solve the puzzle of Parkinson's disease

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter involved in everything from higher cognitive functions to motor control, motivation, arousal, reinforcement, and sexual gratification, the receptors it acts on have been a longstanding target for treating disorders like Parkinson's disease, which is caused by the degeneration of dopamine-using neurons that control movement.

11 Jun 2020