Tanner Stevenson

Dopamine is a crucial signaling molecule released throughout all animals’ brains that is involved in learning, motivation, and decision making—fundamental capacities that allow animals to behave flexibly. It is still unclear whether these functions are distinct, with different effects depending on the subregion of release, or whether they arise from a more basic underlying function. I am working to fill these gaps in our understanding by recording dopamine release across the brains of rats as they perform multiple tasks that require flexible behavior.

In order to behave appropriately in an ever-changing environment, all animals must be able to adapt their behavior on the fly. The neuromodulator dopamine is a signaling molecule in all animals’ brains that is crucial for learning, motivation, and decision making—fundamental capacities that allow animals to behave flexibly. Although considerable effort has gone into characterizing the environmental and behavioral drivers of dopamine release, many studies have focused on a single brain subregion in a single behavior. Growing evidence suggests that dopamine may serve distinct, task-specific functions across subregions; however, dopamine release has yet to be recorded simultaneously across regions and tasks to directly compare these differences. My project addresses this gap by recording from four subregions at once as rats perform two operant tasks requiring flexible behavior. My preliminary data reveal striking regional differences in the timescales and task-related modulation of dopamine release, demonstrating that dopamine signals are not simply uniform across the brain but instead depend strongly on both anatomical location and behavioral demands.