Neurotransmitters are chemicals that are secreted by neurons and relay messages to target
cells. The goal of in vivo electrochemistry is to provide a real-time view of neurotransmitters …

Addictive drugs share with palatable food the property of increasing extracellular dopamine
(DA), preferentially in the nucleus accumbens shell rather than in the core. However, by …

Coincident signaling by dopamine and glutamate is thought to be crucial for a variety of
motivated behaviors. Previous work has suggested that some midbrain dopamine neurons …

Delusions are the false and often incorrigible beliefs that can cause severe suffering in
mental illness. We cannot yet explain them in terms of underlying neurobiological …

The past two decades have witnessed a dramatic accumulation of evidence indicating that
the excitatory amino acid glutamate plays an important role in drug addiction and …

The mesocorticolimbic dopamine (DA) system plays important roles in reward, motivation,
learning, memory, and movement. This system arises from the A10 region, comprising the …

The repeated use of drugs that directly or indirectly stimulate dopamine transmission carry
addiction liability and produce enduring pathological changes in the brain circuitry that …

In addition to dopamine neurons, the ventral tegmental area (VTA) contains GABA-,
glutamate-and co-releasing neurons, and recent reports suggest a complex role for the …

Neurotransmitter identity is a defining feature of all neurons because it constrains the type of
information they convey, but many neurons release multiple transmitters. Although the …

Over the past several years, drug addiction has increasingly been accepted to be a disease
of the brain as opposed to simply being due to a lack of willpower or personality flaw …