The Miller Lab

Miller Lab alumnus Andreas Nieder shows that dopamine (DA) has different effects on two different classes of neurons in the prefrontal cortex.  For neurons with a short latency visual response, DA suppressed activity but preserved their signal to noise ratio.  For neurons with a longer visual latency (exclusively broad-spiking, putative pyramidal neurons), DA increased excitability and enhanced signal/noise ratio.  Thus, DA can shape how the prefrontal cortex processes bottom-up sensory inputs.
Jacob et al