Spatio-temporal dopamine signalling
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter with complex, not well-understood effects. In the basal ganglia dopamine modulates cortical input to the striatum. We study the functional role of dopamine with computational models ranging from `low-level’ cellular models, over neural network models to `high-level’ reinforcement learning models. The goal is to understand how dopamine contributions to learn selecting good action (e.g. via synaptic plasticity) as well as the actual execution of actions (e.g. by changing motivational aspects of behavior). We apply our research result to clinical scenarios including Parkinson’s disease to study how pathological dopamine levels affect behavior.