Through interdisciplinary collaboration, researchers at the University of Copenhagen have created a model of the way the brain releases dopamine. This model will be an important tool in helping scientists better understand how humans learn and how the brain perceives reward. Because of dopamine’s involvement in these activities, the researchers hope that the model can assist in further understanding drug and alcohol addiction and necessary treatment and rehabilitation options.
Dopamine is involved in a number of the brain’s processes that control the way we behave. It plays an important role plays in our ability to handle stress, be motivated, and create an overall sense of well-being. It is a key neurotransmitter in the reward center of the brain.
Certain actions that exceed expectation will cause the brain to temporarily release more dopamine. Actions that are worse than expected will cause the brain to momentarily stop releasing dopamine. This ultimately makes dopamine a “learning signal” that causes us to repeat the actions that give us higher levels of dopamine and avoid those that result in lower dopamine levels. This action also applies to food, sex and competition. The use of drugs and alcohol also raises the level of dopamine.
Some scientists have argued that the dopamine system doesn’t react quick enough to be a part of the human learning process. However, they focused primarily on the slow feedback time when experiencing something negative. Whereas, this new model shows that “the collective signal from many cells provides a rapid enough reaction to influence learning.” (Medical News Today)
The new dopamine model was created in a collaborative effort among physicists, mathematicians and neurobiologists, and its predictions are supported by observations made in animal models. The researches are hoping that it will help overcome some of the challenges faced by neurologists that are often unable to study active brains in living humans. Once the researches are certain the model is correct, then they will begin applying it to dopamine-related illness such as drug and alcohol addiction.
The researchers’ dopamine model will soon be described in the cover article of Journal of Neuroscience.
