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Dopamine

Dopamine retunes for romance

Nature Neuroscience volume 26, page 1837 (2023)Cite this article

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Dopamine neurons respond to a wide range of rewarding stimuli to accommodate different needs. Various needs may co-exist and compete in natural settings, but how competing drives are represented by the dopaminergic system remains unknown. Roeser, Gadagkar and colleagues addressed this issue by studying how different drives (water seeking, singing and courtship) compete in male songbirds, using genetically encoded dopamine sensors and fiber photometry. Thirsty birds sought water most when alone and quiet, and least when singing in the presence of a female bird. Dopamine responses to water-predictive cues in the striatum retuned accordingly: they were highest when a bird was quiet and alone, and lowest when a bird was singing to a female. When the authors perturbed the bird’s song with distorted auditory feedback, dopaminergic performance error signals occurred in area X (a critical region for song production) but not in the medial striatal area. Notably, these error signals were much reduced in the presence of a female, and female calls elicited phasic dopamine responses in area X in the male specifically when he was singing to her. Thus, dopamine signals that subserve different drives are area-specific and can be dynamically tuned to current priorities.

Original reference: Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06580-w (2023)

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  1. Nature Neuroscience https://www.nature.com/neuro/

    Charlotte Arlt

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  1. Charlotte Arlt
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Correspondence to Charlotte Arlt.

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Arlt, C. Dopamine retunes for romance. Nat Neurosci 26, 1837 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-023-01491-5

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