Functional and structural diversity within the human dopamine system
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The mesencephalic dopamine system is essential for a number of basic neural processes, including reward learning, working memory, and motor control. Maladaptive dopamine functioning has been implicated in a number of psychiatric disorders ranging from addiction to impulse disorders and schizophrenia. Understanding the normal function of the dopamine system and its involvement in cognition and behavior is therefore critical for future advances in promoting mental health. Despite the diversity of functions it subserves, a predominant view has been that dopamine neurons are functionally homogeneous and uniformly broadcast reward-related signals as a population to target structures throughout the brain. The work presented here challenges this view by characterizing functional and structural heterogeneity within the dopamine system in humans. In particular, I show that the substantia nigra (SN) and ventral tegmental area (VTA) are activated by aversive events, which is explicitly at odds with the prevailing idea that dopamine neurons homogeneously encode reward prediction error. These regions exhibit differential patterns of functional connectivity during aversive processing, which suggests that they are components of distinct functional networks. I also identify structural diversity between the SN/VTA and striatum with diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and tractography methods. I show that diffusivity in the mesolimbic pathway, but not other nigrostrial pathways, is related to trait impulsiveness, which suggests that these pathways subserve distinct functionality. Collectively, this work suggests that there is functional heterogeneity within the dopamine system, and these functional differences are correlated with anatomically distinct white matter pathways.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Hennigan, Kelly |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Psychology. |
| Primary advisor | McClure, Samuel M |
| Thesis advisor | McClure, Samuel M |
| Thesis advisor | Dougherty, Bob |
| Thesis advisor | Wagner, Anthony David |
| Thesis advisor | Wandell, Brian A |
| Advisor | Dougherty, Bob |
| Advisor | Wagner, Anthony David |
| Advisor | Wandell, Brian A |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Kelly Hennigan. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Psychology. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2015. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2015 by Kelly Jeanne Hennigan
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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