Use the labels in the right column to find what you want. Or you can go thru them one by one, there are only 29,372 posts. Searching is done in the search box in upper left corner. I blog on anything to do with stroke. DO NOT DO ANYTHING SUGGESTED HERE AS I AM NOT MEDICALLY TRAINED, YOUR DOCTOR IS, LISTEN TO THEM. BUT I BET THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO GET YOU 100% RECOVERED. I DON'T EITHER BUT HAVE PLENTY OF QUESTIONS FOR YOUR DOCTOR TO ANSWER.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Dopamine restores reward prediction errors in old age
Senescence affects the ability to utilize information about
the likelihood of rewards for optimal decision-making. Using functional
magnetic resonance imaging in humans, we found that healthy older adults
had an abnormal signature of expected value, resulting in an incomplete
reward prediction error (RPE) signal in the nucleus accumbens, a brain
region that receives rich input projections from substantia
nigra/ventral tegmental area (SN/VTA) dopaminergic neurons. Structural
connectivity between SN/VTA and striatum, measured by diffusion tensor
imaging, was tightly coupled to inter-individual differences in the
expression of this expected reward value signal. The dopamine precursor
levodopa (L-DOPA) increased the task-based learning rate and task
performance in some older adults to the level of young adults. This drug
effect was linked to restoration of a canonical neural RPE. Our results
identify a neurochemical signature underlying abnormal reward
processing in older adults and indicate that this can be modulated by
L-DOPA
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