A new model of the way the brain releases dopamine may be useful for understanding drug addiction and in the treatment of schizophrenia.



Dopamine is an important chemical involved in transmitting signals between nerve cells.



Researchers at the University of Copenhagen believe the model will be an important tool in helping scientists understand how we learn and how the brain perceives reward and punishment.



It is hoped that the model can be used to understand drug addiction and in the treatment of schizophrenia. The study is the cover article in the Oct. 20th, 2010 Journal of ugg boots clearance Neuroscience.



In the brain, dopamine is involved in a number of processes that control the way we behave. If an action results in the substance being released, we are more likely to repeat the action. This applies to actions such as eating, sexual intercourse or winning a competition.



However, the same also holds true when individuals take harmful narcotics. Scientists believe that mental illnesses such as schizophrenia can be linked to dopamine imbalances.



If an action leads to a better response than expected, the brain will temporarily release more dopamine. If the cheap ugg bailey button boots response is worse than expected, the brain momentarily stops releasing dopamine. This mechanism is responsible for our tendency to repeat actions that have given us a high level of dopamine, and to avoid those that result in lower dopamine levels.



why many see dopamine as a learning signal, says postdoctoral researcher Jakob Kisbye Dreyer of the department of neuroscience and pharmacology, who was involved with the module creation.



have argued that it is impossible for the dopamine system to react quickly enough to be a part of our learning process. It can take a split second to learn something, but a cell that releases dopamine works slowly. If you look at a lighthouse that flashes at a slow frequency, you might not notice right away that the light was turned off.



the arguments against dopamine as an aid to learning have focused on the slow feedback time when you experience something bad, and that it is too slow for the brain to make a connection. Our model shows that the collective signal from many cells provides a rapid enough reaction to influence learning. of the biggest challenges faced by neurologists is that it is difficult to study active brains in living humans.



neuroscience can easily become very complicated, Dreyer says. we try to come up with complete explanations of the way the brain works, we get models that are so complex that they are difficult to test. dopamine model predictions, created as part of a unique collaborative effort among physicists, mathematicians and neurobiologists, are supported by observations made in animal models.