Abstract
Phasic activity of the mesolimbic dopamine pathway – burst-firing of dopamine neurons and the resulting dopamine release events at striatal targets – have been associated with a variety of motivational events, such as novelty, salient stimuli, social interaction, and reward prediction. Over the past decade, advances in electrochemical techniques have allowed measurement of naturally occurring dopamine release events, or dopamine transients, in awake animals during ongoing behavior. Thus, a growing body of studies has revealed dynamic dopamine input to ventral striatum during motivated behavior in a variety of experimental paradigms. We propose that dopamine transients may be important neural signals in pup-directed aspects of maternal behavior, as preliminary data suggest that dopamine transients in dams are associated with pup cues. Measurements of dopamine transients may be useful to investigate not only typical maternal behavior but also maternal inattention induced by drug exposure or stress.
Highlights
Supplementary Material The Movies 1 and 2 for this article can be found online at http:// www.frontiersin.org/child_and_neurodevelopmental_psychiatry/ abstract/10294
Dopamine trace: Several dopamine transients occur while the dam is oriented toward the investigator and the pups
Current at the oxidation potential of dopamine scrolls on screen in real-time with the video; the timing signal from the voltammetric instrumentation is time-stamped on the top right of the video recording
Summary
Supplementary Material The Movies 1 and 2 for this article can be found online at http:// www.frontiersin.org/child_and_neurodevelopmental_psychiatry/ abstract/10294
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