Uploaded December 2023 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago

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When most of us think about dopamine, we think about reward signals. But new research from Northwestern Medicine, published in Nature Neuroscience, has found a genetic subtype of dopamine neurons that do not respond to rewards at all, and instead, fire when the body moves.

Rajeshwar Awatramani, PhD, and Daniel Dombeck, PhD led this work, and in this episode they explain how the results could change the field of dopamine research and pave the way for new research possibilities, especially concerning Parkinson's disease, a condition marked by a loss of dopamine neurons and motor system challenges.

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