Michigan State University researchers have discovered that dopamine, a brain chemical traditionally associated with reward and pleasure, also plays a role in devaluing memories of rewards. This unexpected finding could revolutionize approaches to treating addiction and other related disorders.
New research from Michigan State University, published in the journal Communications Biology, has shed light on the complex role of dopamine in the brain, revealing its involvement in diminishing the value of reward-related memories. This discovery challenges long-standing theories about dopamine’s functions and opens new pathways for understanding and potentially treating a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders.
The study led by Alexander Johnson, an associate professor in MSU’s Department of Psychology, showed that dopamine is intricately involved in reshaping memories associated with past rewards.
“We discovered that dopamine plays a role in modifying how a reward-related memory is perceived over time,” Johnson said in a news release.
In the experiment, mice were conditioned to associate an auditory cue with a sweet-tasting food. When the mice later retrieved this memory, they were made to feel temporarily ill, akin to an upset stomach after eating spoiled food. Remarkably, even after recovery, the mice avoided the sweet-tasting food, indicating that the devalued memory alone could disrupt their future behavior.
The researchers used innovative techniques to identify and reactivate brain cells involved in the memory retrieval process. They found that dopamine-producing neurons played a crucial role in this memory devaluation. Manipulating and recording the activity of these neurons further confirmed dopamine’s unexpected function in memory processing.
“Our findings were surprising based on our prior understanding of dopamine’s function. We typically don’t tend to think of dopamine being involved in the level of detailed informational and memory processing that our study showed,” Johnson added. “It’s a violation of what we expected, revealing that dopamine’s role is more complex than previously thought.”
Using computational modeling, the team was able to simulate how dopamine signals modify reward memories. This deeper understanding of dopamine’s broader functions could have significant implications for treating conditions such as addiction, depression and other neuropsychiatric disorders.
“Understanding dopamine’s broader functions in the brain could provide new insights into how we approach conditions like addiction, depression and other neuropsychiatric disorders,” added Johnson. “Since dopamine is implicated in so many aspects of brain function, these insights have wide-ranging implications. In the future, we may be able to use these approaches to reduce the value of problematic memories and, as such, diminish their capacity to control unwanted behaviors.”
Source: Michigan State University