In Vivo Imaging of Local Synaptic Neuromodulation by Dopamine

Dopamine is a powerful neurotransmitter that facilitates memory formation and underlies reward-related behaviors, but current techniques to assess dopamine signaling in vivo lack sufficient specificity and spatiotemporal resolution. Evans will develop new fluorescent sensors for dopamine receptors and apply them to investigate the molecular mechanisms that underlie learning in mice in vivo. The biosensors will be used to visualize the dynamic activity of specific dopamine receptors in vitro, before they are virally expressed in the motor cortex in behaving mice. Employed during motor learning, these sensors should generate a sub-micron scale map of how dopamine receptor subtypes modulate long-term structural plasticity of cortical dendritic spines. The results could help shed light on how dopaminergic modulation correlates with structural and functional plasticity.