Erik Oleson Lab.

Fast-scan cyclic voltammetry is an electrochemical approach allowing for real-time dopamine assessments in the brains of behaving rats. This level of temporal resolution is providing unprecedented insight into the how the brain computes important stimuli while animals are interacting with the environment. Recently, we demonstrated that subsecond dopamine release events encode conditioned stimuli predicting aversion (Figure 1A) and its successful avoidance (Figure 1B). These latter two observations (Oleson et al., 2012) are the inspiration for several of my ongoing lines of research. The aforementioned technique is being combined with recently developed chemogenetic and optogenetic technology to assess the causal nature of dopamine in behaviors motivated by negative affect.

We are also characterizing the role of dopamine in motivated behavior using novel behavioral economics procedures Dr. Oleson developed as a graduate student (Oleson et al., 2011).