Class notes
Psy 627 Catecholamines and Serotonin Notes
- Course
- Psychopharmacology
- Institution
- Pepperdine University
Comprehensive and detailed Catecholamines and Serotonin Notes for Psy 627. *Essential!! *For you
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PSY 627-3Catecholamines and serotonin
- Catecholamine production occurs on a cellular level
- Catecholamines, once produced (by cells throughout the nervous system,
and epinephrine and norepinephrine by cells in the adrenal glands which
lies on top of each kidney), are stored in synaptic vesicles in neuronal
terminal buttons.
- Once the coalmines are released into the CNS via exocytosis, once into the
cleft, the neurotransmitter is active, it will move throughout the
extracellular space, it’ll look for receptors on neighboring neurons that it is
designed to target, and once landing on those receptors will activate
neurons throughout the CNS to become active and to release more
catecholamine substance.
- When we no longer want the neurotransmitter to be active in the cleft (the
space between the two neurons) we need to remove that neuron from the
cleft, gather it up, bring it back into the presynaptic neuron terminal button,
and repackage it into a synaptic vesicle for storage. The way this occurs is
through VMAT2.
- Reuptake of catecholamines from the CNS occurs via the transport molecule
known as vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2)
- VMAT2 is responsible for collecting excess catecholamines in the CNS and
recycling them into a vesicle in the terminal buttons of neurons throughout
the CNS.
- A second catecholamine transporter known as VMAT1 exists in the region of
the adrenal glands
, - VMAT1 is responsible for removing epinephrine and norepinephrine from
the CNS when these hormones are no longer needed to produce the fight-
or-flight response
Dopamine (a catecholamine)
Dopaminergic (producing) system
- 2 structures in the brain specifically dedicated to high levels of dopamine
production. One is basal ganglia, which produces dopamine internally and
holds onto all of its dopamine, because of its exports its dopamine it will
impact one’s ability to control movement, as occurs in Parkinson’s disease
when dopaminergic neurons internal to the basal ganglia die off or atrophy.
- The structure known as the tegmentum, located in the midbrain cortical
region, produces and exports a significant amount of the brain’s dopamine
o The specific dopamine-producing region of the tegmentum is
referred to as the ventral tegmentum.
o The VT exports the dopamine that it produces via three pathways
The mesolimbic pathway begins at the VT and progresses to
the temporal lobes
Affects amygdala and hyper stimulates it, where we
experience anxiety and fear. It occurs in schizophrenia
where the person experiences paranoid ideation due to
hyper dopamine stimulation of the amygdala in each
lobe of the brain. There’s also auditory association cortex
in each temporal lobe that interprets electrical signals
from the auditory cortex and makes sense of what it is
that the brain is hearing. But when you hyper stimulate
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