Elsevier

Neuroscience Research

Volume 8, Issue 2, June 1990, Pages 138-145
Neuroscience Research

Short communication
Modulation of neuronal activities by iontophoretically applied catecholamines and acetycholine in the primate motor cortex during a visual reaction-time task

https://doi.org/10.1016/0168-0102(90)90066-NGet rights and content

Abstract

Single neuronal activities in the primate motor cortex were modulated by iontophoretically applied acetylcholine (ACh), noradrenaline (NA) or dopamine (DA) while monkeys were performing a visual reaction-time task. ACh caused general increases of the discharge activities of both the background baseline and the task-related activity peaks, whereas NA caused decreases mainly of the baseline. DA caused activity increases in half of the tested neurons, and decreases in 25% of the neurons. NA modulated the firing rate to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio of the related activities. ACh and DA, by contrast, subserved to enhance the synaptic transmission in the motor cortex.

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    This “phasic mode” of DA release is thought to be important for proper functions of the prefrontal cortex, PFC (Williams and Goldman-Rakic, 1995; Schultz, 1998; Heien and Wightman, 2006). Since it is technically impossible to precisely control dopamine release during elaborate experimental paradigms by simply shocking the midbrain (Lewis and O'Donnell, 2000), researchers have mimicked transient DA release by iontophoretic application of dopamine via glass pipettes inserted into the cortex of awake monkeys (Sesack and Bunney, 1989; Matsumura et al., 1990; Williams and Goldman-Rakic, 1995; Sawaguchi, 2001; Vijayraghavan et al., 2007). Although these experiments highlight the importance of DA in PFC, the cellular mechanisms by which DA modulates PFC function, specifically in terms of its influence on single cell activity, remain largely unknown.

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Present address: Section of Neuroanatomy, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510, U.S.A.

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