David Adam in Nature:
When neuroscientists gather in the Spanish city of Seville in May for the annual Dopamine Society meeting, one discussion could be unusually lively. Session 31 will feature a debate between researchers who fundamentally disagree about the role dopamine has in the brain.
Dopamine is one of the most extensively studied neurotransmitters, chemicals that convey signals from cell to cell. It’s the one with the highest profile outside neuroscience: often known as the ‘pleasure chemical’, it’s depicted as the hit of reward that people get from recreational drugs or scrolling through social media. That’s a gross simplification of what dopamine does; on that, researchers agree. But beyond that, where once there was a simple model that explained how dopamine works in the brain, now there are challenges that seek to amend the theory — or even to overturn it.
More here.
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