Release date- 20082019 - In a new study of seven people with Parkinson's disease, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report evidence that deep brain stimulation using electrical impulses jumpstarts the nerve cells that produce the chemical messenger
dopamine to reduce tremors and muscle rigidity that are the hallmark of Parkinson's disease, and increases feelings of well-being.
Brain activity involving the
dopamine system in the region of the brain called the striatum is a critical regulator of motor activity, motivation, attention and reward processing.
The findings of the altered neurons come from recordings of
dopamine and non-dopamine neurons in the brain's addiction centre, called the ventral tegmental area (VTA), following chronic nicotine exposure during pregnancy.
'With the help of a new positron emission tomography (PET) technique we developed, we were not only able to find the two peaks of
dopamine release, but we could also identify the specific brain regions that were associated with these releases.
Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter in the central nervous system of the human body and plays important roles in motivation, cognition and motor control.
They could lead to neurons "believing" that there is more
dopamine than there actually is, which could lead to mature circuits with reduced
dopamine signalling once they fully mature (see (http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnsys.2014.00038/full) Performance enhancement at the cost of potential brain plasticity: neural ramifications of nootropic drugs in the healthy developing brain for more details).
24-hour urine
dopamine was drawn due to minimal elevation of metanephrines and normal catecholamines.
These results suggest that part of the reason people with the FTO variant are more likely to be obese may be because
dopamine signals in their brain cause them to feel more reward and craving when presented with high-calorie foods.
Dopamine helps us to take action to gain reward and pleasure.
The organizations will provide $625,000 to Ole Isacson of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute for preclinical work exploring implantation of
dopamine neurons created from engineered stem cells.
The experiments, performed in rat models of Parkinson's disease, reveal that the latest version of stem cell-derived
dopamine cells fully mimic the characteristics and function of the
dopamine neurons that are lost in Parkinson's disease.
When a person is exposed to certain mind-altering substances, such as alcohol or cocaine,
dopamine levels increase.
