How Dopamine Neurons Contribute to Memory Formation in Humans

Summary: According to researchers, dopamine neurons may play a key role in the formation of episodic memory. The findings could help in the development of new treatments for neurodegenerative disorders that affect memory.

Source: Cedars Sinai Medical Center.

Research from Cedars-Sinai sheds light on how the human brain rapidly forms new memories, providing insights into potential new treatments for memory disorders.

A new study examined neurons that produce dopamine, a compound that acts as a transmitter for nerve impulses. It found that these dopamine neurons play a critical role in the formation of episodic memory, which allows people to remember such things as where they parked the car in the morning and what they had for dinner last night.

The study, published in the journal Current Biology, was co-authored by Ueli Rutishauser, PhD, the senior author and an associate professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai. In the study, investigators observed the response of individual human dopamine neurons in patients undergoing deep brain stimulation surgery to treat Parkinson’s disease. The patients watched a sequence of images: Some had never been seen before and were thus “novel”; others were repeated and were therefore “familiar.”

For each image, the patient pressed a button indicating whether it was novel or familiar. This allowed investigators to track the formation of new memories, because an image was only novel once. Afterward, it formed a memory.

“What we discovered was that a subset of the dopaminergic neurons responded only when an image was novel, but not when it was familiar. In other words, it indicated if the image was new, but not if something was familiar,” said Jan Kaminski, PhD, first author of the study and a project scientist at Cedars-Sinai. “This is an important new scientific discovery, because it has so far remained unclear how the dopaminergic system contributes to episodic memory formation.”

This research was conducted while Parkinson’s patients were having a deep brain stimulation device implanted to reduce their symptoms. As part of this procedure, during which patients are awake, an electrode is lowered into the brain to precisely localize the deep brain stimulation electrode. The target of the electrode is deep inside the brain, close to where the dopamine neurons are located.

“This procedure is one of the rare opportunities for researchers to observe the activity of dopamine neurons in an area of the brain called the substania nigra in an awake human being, a type of recording only possible because the patient is undergoing a neurosurgical procedure,” said Adam Mamelak, MD, professor of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai and a co-investigator of the study. “This setup provides extremely valuable new insights into how humans form memories.”

brain
Research from Cedars-Sinai sheds light on how the human brain rapidly forms new memories, providing insights into potential new treatments for memory disorders. A new study examined neurons that produce dopamine, a compound that acts as a transmitter for nerve impulses. It found that these dopamine neurons play a critical role in the formation of episodic memory, which allows people to remember such things as where they parked the car in the morning and what they had for dinner last night. NeuroscienceNews.com image is credited to National Institutes of Health.

While not directly tied to research on specific ailments, the findings provide new information relevant to the understanding of certain diseases, Rutishauser said. “Dopamine neurons degrade in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, which in addition to motor symptoms is often also accompanied by cognitive issues such as memory problems,” he said. “What this paper shows is that dopamine neurons activate for novel stimuli. This short ‘burst’ of dopamine is what triggers learning.”

A common treatment for patients with Parkinson’s, for instance, is to take medications that increase dopamine to a steady level. But those drugs do not facilitate the short bursts that help in the formation of memory. “Our work reveals new avenues for treatments that can be explored, including those that restore short bursts of dopamine or that otherwise increase activity analogous to what dopamine is thought to do,” Rutishauser said.

Apart from the scientific insights derived, this study also is an excellent demonstration of the power of interdisciplinary research and collaboration. “The study team was composed of scientists, neurologists and neurosurgeons and was only possible due to a close collaboration between Neurosurgery and Neurology. This kind of team science is a perfect demonstration of the groundbreaking basic science made possible by the close integration between clinical and research work at Cedars-Sinai,” said Keith Black, MD, chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery.

About this neuroscience research article

Funding: The study was supported by the Pfeiffer Foundation, NIH NINDS (U01NS098961), the NSF (BCS-1554105) and the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience.

Source: Jonathan Diamond – Cedars Sinai Medical Center
Publisher: Organized by NeuroscienceNews.com.
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is credited to National Institutes of Health.
Original Research: Open access research for “Novelty-Sensitive Dopaminergic Neurons in the Human Substantia Nigra Predict Success of Declarative Memory Formation” by Jan Kamiński, Adam N. Mamelak, Kurtis Birch, Clayton P. Mosher, Michele Tagliati, and Ueli Rutishauser in Current Biology. Published April 12 2018.
doi:10.1016/j.cub.2018.03.024

Cite This NeuroscienceNews.com Article

[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]Cedars Sinai Medical Center “How Dopamine Neurons Contribute to Memory Formation in Humans.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 2 May 2018.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/dopmaine-neurons-memory-8939/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]Cedars Sinai Medical Center (2018, May 2). How Dopamine Neurons Contribute to Memory Formation in Humans. NeuroscienceNews. Retrieved May 2, 2018 from https://neurosciencenews.com/dopmaine-neurons-memory-8939/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]Cedars Sinai Medical Center “How Dopamine Neurons Contribute to Memory Formation in Humans.” https://neurosciencenews.com/dopmaine-neurons-memory-8939/ (accessed May 2, 2018).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]


Abstract

Novelty-Sensitive Dopaminergic Neurons in the Human Substantia Nigra Predict Success of Declarative Memory Formation

Highlights
•Human substantia nigra (SN) neurons are modulated by stimulus novelty
•Memory-selective neurons in substantia nigra are putatively dopaminergic
•Phase locking of SN neurons to frontal oscillations predicts memory formation
•Validates predictions of Lisman and Grace’s VTA/SN-hippocampus loop model in humans

Summary
The encoding of information into long-term declarative memory is facilitated by dopamine. This process depends on hippocampal novelty signals, but it remains unknown how midbrain dopaminergic neurons are modulated by declarative-memory-based information. We recorded individual substantia nigra (SN) neurons and cortical field potentials in human patients performing a recognition memory task. We found that 25% of SN neurons were modulated by stimulus novelty. Extracellular waveform shape and anatomical location indicated that these memory-selective neurons were putatively dopaminergic. The responses of memory-selective neurons appeared 527 ms after stimulus onset, changed after a single trial, and were indicative of recognition accuracy. SN neurons phase locked to frontal cortical theta-frequency oscillations, and the extent of this coordination predicted successful memory formation. These data reveal that dopaminergic neurons in the human SN are modulated by memory signals and demonstrate a progression of information flow in the hippocampal-basal ganglia-frontal cortex loop for memory encoding.

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