dopamine receptor
grrlscientist | April 8, 2010tags: evolutionary biology, behavioral ecology, molecular ecology, personality, novelty seeking, exploratory behavior, dopamine receptor, dopamine receptor D4 gene, DRD4 gene polymorphism, ornithology, birds, Great Tit, Parus major, researchblogging.org,peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paper
Bold or cautious? Individuals with a particular gene variant are very curious --
but only in some populations.
Image: Henk Dikkers.
Research suggests that personality variations are heritable in humans and other animal species, and there are many hypotheses as to why differences in personality…
sporte | June 19, 2008Right or wrong, the word "dopamine" always conjures up images in my head of rats pushing levers over and over again, working desperately hard to send shots of dopamine into their tiny little rodent brains.
Dopamine, like many other neurotransmitters (chemicals that send signals in the brain), works by binding to proteins on the surface of brain cells and sending a signal to the cell. There are five different subtypes of receptors for dopamine (D1-D5) with somewhat different activities (1) and drugs that bind to these receptors are known to have potent effects on brain activity and behavior (…
sporte | June 17, 2008In its simplest sense, we imagine that learning occurs through a series of positive and negative rewards. Some actions lead to pleasure, others to pain, and it seems reasonable to expect that people will repeat the actions with pleasurable results and avoid those that ended in pain. Yet, we all know people who aren't deterred by the idea of punishment. We all know people who never seem to learn.
Could there be a physical reason, hidden in their genes?
In December 2007, Science published a study by Klein et. al. (1) where they asked if a specific genotype at a location called "DRD2-TAQ-IA"…