How the Brain's Dopamine Circuitry Helps Regulate Cognitive Flexibility and Reward-Seeking

Each month The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation hosts a Meet the Scientist Webinar featuring a researcher discussing the latest findings related to mental illness. In May, 2023, the Foundation featured Dr. Nikhil Urs of the University of Florida. Description: Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that regulates many critical processes such as movement, cognition, motivation, reward/pleasure, and hormone secretion. Dysfunction of the dopamine system has been implicated in many brain disorders, including schizophrenia, OCD, ADHD and Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Urs will discuss his efforts to understand the organization and function of cortical dopamine circuitry and how it helps to regulate cognitive flexibility and reinforcement learning (the latter involves how we learn to optimize our behavior to obtain greatest rewards). Dr. Urs will also discuss his efforts to discover new ways of treating multiple psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. Learn more at https://www.bbrfoundation.org/event/h... Visit us on the web: https://www.bbrfoundation.org If you like this presentation, please share it!