CCN Colloquium: "New insights to the role of dopaminergic-cholinergic signaling and their impact for learning and memory"

We all know that as part of our daily lives we are constantly interacting with our environment - learning, adapting, establishing new memories and habits, and for better or for worse, forgetting as well. At the cellular level, these processes can be encoded by changes in the strength of synaptic transmission between neurons. The process by which neuronal connections change in response to experience is known as "synaptic plasticity" and this process is a major interest of our laboratory. Our goals are to understand the molecular mechanisms for synaptic plasticity and identify when these processes have gone awry in neurological diseases. In doing so, we will establish the necessary framework to target these processes for therapeutic interventions; potentially identifying novel and improved treatment options.