These circuits involve the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is often involved in feel-good activities and even in addiction.
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Some of the damage the disease causes to brain neurons that make the neurotransmitter dopamine also occur in the gut neurons, researchers say.
Wang has already demonstrated that the mere sight and smell of food can cause a release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with motivation and pleasure.
In one application of optogenetics, scientists investigated how neurons that make dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain, may give rise to feelings of reward and pleasure.
Although there is no way, yet, to revive dead brain cells, attempts are under way to use old Parkinson's disease drugs that boost levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine or mimic its effects.
The urge to drink or take drugs is, neurochemically speaking, linked to endorphins (natural morphine-like molecules) or dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is involved in bits of the brain that control reward behaviour.
In a last-ditch effort to save her, doctors transferred her to nearby Fleni hospital, where neurologist Esteban Fridman treated her with high doses of the Parkinson's disease drug levodopa, which raises levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine.
Paper author Dr Kathryn Hall, from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), said this gene had been chosen because "there has been increasing evidence that the neurotransmitter dopamine is activated when people anticipate and respond to placebos".
Sapra and Zak began by analyzing the genes of 60 professional traders working in five major Wall Street firms. (They collected the DNA samples in 2008 only three of the firms are still in business.) The scientists focused on a short list of genes that are known to affect the activity of dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain.
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One of the main ways schizophrenia drugs differ is in how they inhibit a brain receptor for dopamine, a key neurotransmitter that is overactive in some parts of a schizophrenic's brain.
DRD4 encodes a receptor molecule for a neurotransmitter called dopamine. (Neurotransmitters are chemicals that carry signals from one nerve cell to another.) Those with a variant of DRD4 called 7R, and also a large network of friends acquired during their adolescence, tended to be (in the American sense of the word) liberals ie, left wing.
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