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NMDA Receptors in Dopaminergic Neurons Are Crucial for Habit Learning
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

NMDA Receptors in Dopaminergic Neurons Are Crucial for Habit Learning

Lei Phillip Wang, Fei Li, Dong Wang, Kun Xie, Deheng Wang, Xiaoming Shen and Joe Z. Tsien
Neuron (Cambridge, Mass.), v 72(6), pp 1055-1066
22 Dec 2011
PMID: 22196339
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2011.10.019View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)Open Access (Publisher-Specific) Open

Abstract

Life Sciences & Biomedicine Neurosciences Neurosciences & Neurology Science & Technology
Dopamine is crucial for habit learning. Activities of midbrain dopaminergic neurons are regulated by the cortical and subcortical signals among which glutamatergic afferents provide excitatory inputs. Cognitive implications of glutamatergic afferents in regulating and engaging dopamine signals during habit learning, however, remain unclear. Here, we show that mice with dopaminergic neuron-specific NMDAR1 deletion are impaired in a variety of habit-learning tasks, while normal in some other dopamine-modulated functions such as locomotor activities, goal-directed learning, and spatial reference memories. In vivo neural recording revealed that dopaminergic neurons in these mutant mice could still develop the cue-reward association responses; however, their conditioned response robustness was drastically blunted. Our results suggest that integration of glutamatergic inputs to DA neurons by NMDA receptors, likely by regulating associative activity patterns, is a crucial part of the cellular mechanism underpinning habit learning.

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Web of Science research areas
Neurosciences
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