About this Research Topic
Dopamine has been associated with both acquiring and promoting learned behaviors. When an established behavior needs to be modified, however, these two aspects of dopamine seem to be at odds: facilitating new learning and modifying established behaviors on one hand, while promoting prior learning on the other. How are these two aspects of dopamine, inherently contradictory, reconciled?
We start from the premise that a crucial, highly conserved neurotransmitter system integral to multiple critical functions, from motivation to movement, likely evolved through a selection process that favored flexible adaptation to changing environments and conditions. For this special topic, then, we would like to see original research articles, reviews and theory/hypothesis manuscripts that highlight and explore the role of dopamine in mediating behavioral flexibility, defined here as the mechanisms that underlie the modification of established behaviors and skills rather than initial acquisition. We welcome manuscripts across a range of methods and perspectives, including human and animal studies using electrophysiological, behavioral, pharmacological, computational and human imaging methods. We particularly encourage manuscripts that adopt a developmental perspective and consider how changes in the dopamine system across the lifespan may contribute to differences in behavioral flexibility during different stages of life.
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