For decades, scientists have understood that when a person perceives something as pleasurable, dopamine is released in their brain. Hear a favorite song come on the radio? Dopamine time. See the vending machine accidentally release two treats instead of one? Dopamine. Show up to lap swimming and realize the pool is empty? A splash of dopamine.
In these happy moments, scientists thought dopamine was released as though it was flooding the brain. But a new study in Science found the brain is also capable of sending targeted bursts of dopamine. This new insight could help scientists studying dopamine-related diseases like addiction or Parkinson’s.
What Is Dopamine?
Scientists didn’t fully understand the function of dopamine until the late 1950s, when it was proven to be a neurotransmitter. From then, scientists recognized that dopamine regulated behavior, cognition, movement, and also played a role in immunity.
As scientists’ understanding of dopamine became more sophisticated, they came to realize that the pathway dopamine takes in the brain is based on function. When related to reward, dopamine comes from nerve cell bodies in the ventral tegmental area. It is then released into the nucleus accumbens and prefrontal cortex. But when related to motor functions, dopamine comes from the substantia nigra cell bodies and then goes into the striatum.
Regardless of the pathway, scientists thought that once dopamine was released, it flooded the brain.
Only in the last few months did a new study find the brain is also capable of sending dopamine in short, targeted bursts.
Dopamine Distribution
In the July 2025 study in Science, scientists used two-photon microscopy to examine brain tissue from mice. This highly advanced microscope enabled them to better visualize the brain's structure and how dopamine can be released to specific nerve cell branches.
“Up until now, we thought that dopamine only existed in a broad mode. It doesn’t mean that doesn’t occur, but these local dopamine signals also exist, and they can send meaningful signals to downstream circuits. We didn’t have the resolution or the ability to see these things before,” says Christopher Ford, the lead author on the study and a professor in the department of pharmacology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
Understanding how dopamine is released in the brain could help with the treatment of dopamine-related diseases. People with Parkinson’s Disease, for example, have a dopamine deficiency. Scientists believe that because dopamine regulates motor control, the deficiency is responsible for many Parkinson’s symptoms, such as shaking or tremors.
One treatment for Parkinson’s involves a drug that mimics dopamine. Ford is hopeful that understanding how dopamine is released to specific circuits could lead to the development of more impactful pharmaceuticals.
“This finding that dopamine can signal in a more local mode can help us have a better framework for these drugs,” he says.
People living with addiction are also dealing with a dopamine deficiency. With addiction, a person gets a mood boost from a substance. The boost is far larger and more pleasurable than the brain’s dopamine release for rewards. Over time, the mood boost the person typically receives from the pleasures of daily life is muted in comparison to how they feel under the influence of substances.
By understanding what happens at the cellular level during dopamine deficiency, Ford says researchers may be able to better comprehend how these diseases develop and how treatment or prevention can be improved.
But first, there are still many questions to be answered.
“We’d like to find these local signals that we’ve discovered,” Ford says. “This study has found they exist and raises the possibility they can transfer information in downstream signals. How do these signals contribute to those broad events?”
Answers, however, may be years away. The current study, led by Andrew Yee, a postdoctoral fellow in Ford’s lab, took four years to complete.
Read More: 5 Essential Neurotransmitters for Everyday Life
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
- PubMed. Arvid Carlsson, and the story of dopamine
- PubMed. Dopamine, Immunity, and Disease
- PubMed. The Role of Dopamine and Its Dysfunction as a Consequence of Oxidative Stress
- Science. Discrete spatiotemporal encoding of striatal dopamine transmission
- NIH. Drugs. Brains, and Behavior: The Science of Addiction
