Dr. Nikhil Urs and his students’ research focus on dopamine neural transmission in the brain. This involves understanding the factors that activate dopamine release, the subsequent effects on brain activity, and how these mechanisms contribute to changes in behavior, learning and cognition. Normally when you think of dopamine, you think of happiness or the emotion of being happy, right? Well, dopamine isn’t directly tied to happiness but rather the actions and sense of achievement that can lead to the feeling of happiness or a positive outcome. For example, if you were to imagine a scenario where you desired to consume chocolate, you would likely take specific actions to achieve that goal, such as getting up and walking to where the chocolate is located. The dopamine released in your brain caused you to take the action that led to the positive outcome.
Dopamine is also sensitive to environmental cues, not just an actual outcome. Using the chocolate example, if you knew that there was a room with chocolate and only one path led to it, you would initially follow the said path. As you became familiar with the surroundings, however, you would begin to focus on distinctive features such as specific-colored flowers or the shape of a particular building on that path. This process filters out any irrelevant sensory information, allowing you to focus on the most meaningful cues to accomplish your goal.
Dopamine plays a crucial role in associative learning, where we link different cues to different outcomes to different cues. In the case of addiction, this process can go awry, as individuals may become overly reliant on these cues, leading to negative consequences. Forming new associations based on different scenarios that occur, specifically when a routine is disrupted which may lead to feelings of disorientation or can lead to the ‘autopilot’ feeling, when you follow a path you normally take subconsciously. In the Urs lab, they want to understand how the brain updates these associations and habits, which can lead to developing therapeutic strategies to treat disorders such as addiction, depression and schizophrenia.