A time and a place for everything - targeting dopamine reinforcement for treating Parkinson’s disease

Professor John N.J. Reynolds, Department of Anatomy, University of Otago

The basal ganglia and their loops with cortex provide an anatomical architecture specialised for selecting actions from competing motivations. Through the role of dopamine and cellular mechanisms of reinforcement operating in the basal ganglia, it is possible to bias selection towards actions that maximise rewarding and minimise harmful outcomes. In this talk, I will outline some of our recent work focussed on elucidating the critical timing requirements for both dopamine and acetylcholine signalling for normal reinforcement mechanisms. I will then present some development work we have undertaken recently to emulate reinforcement signalling tageting the basal ganglia, with the aim of improving the long-term treatment for Parkinson’s disease.

John Reynolds is a Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Anatomy at the University of Otago in New Zealand. His research team studies the application of neuroplasticity approaches to Parkinson’s disease and stroke, from a translational perspective. His focus is on understanding the natural conjunction and timing of neuromodulator signals influencing synaptic plasticity in affected brain areas. John graduated in Medicine in 1994 with three years postgraduate experience, then returned to University of Otago to complete a PhD in 1997. He has received an international Brain Research Young Investigator Award and an Ako Aotearoa National Tertiary Teaching Award, and was a recipient of an inaugural Rutherford Discovery Fellowship from the Royal Society of NZ.