Ingo Willuhn, Associate Professor at the Psychiatry Department of Amsterdam UMC and group leader at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, receives a Vici grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to study the synergistic encoding of reward and aversion by dopamine and serotonin. By unraveling the combinatorics of these two neuromodulators, Ingo Willuhn aims to develop a unified theory which also addresses the neurobiology of dysregulated behavior such as impulsivity, relevant for many psychiatric disorders.

Innovative tools combined with encoded measurements techniques

Innovative tools that Willuhn co-developed make it possible to study dopamine and serotonin signals simultaneously, in multiple brain regions, as well as their integration on post-synaptic neurons and downstream behavior. “Several methodological breakthroughs enable my group of scientists to realize this endeavor,“ Willuhn says when he speaks about his electrochemical and genetically-encoded measurement techniques for dopamine and serotonin release, and miniaturized fluorescence microscopes to record their respective post-synaptic neuronal activity.

Portrait of Ingo Willuhn

Several methodological breakthroughs enable my group of scientists to realize this endeavor
Ingo Willuhn
Associate Professor at the Psychiatry Department of Amsterdam UMC and group leader at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

A pathway to improve treatments of psychiatric disorders

Impulsivity is a core symptom of several psychiatric disorders, and the dysregulation of dopamine and serotonin systems is thought to lie at their root. To treat a variety of psychiatric disorders neuromodulatory techniques such as deep brain stimulation (DBS) are used, which is often aimed at fiber bundles near the striatum that carry dopamine and serotonin axons. Thus, results of this study could be of great benefit by identifying new target brain regions for DBS electrode placement to improve therapeutic efficiency.

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