17 January 2020

Pierre Trifilieff

Neuroscience Symposium
La Fleur Group

The Neuroscience Symposia are organized weekly by the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. The presentations are given by researchers from the institute or by guest speakers. The title and content of the symposium is usually made known in the week prior to the presentation.

Colloquium room – Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

4:00 pm – Causal link between brain lipid biostatus and alterations of reward processing: Relevance for psychiatric disorders?
4:45 pm – Discussion and drinks

Abstract

Dysfunction in dopamine transmission is a common phenotype of psychiatric disorders that encompass deficits in reward processing, including schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorders. Strikingly, these pathologies are also accompanied by alterations in lipid metabolism and a decrease in phospholipid-containing polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in particular. However, the implication of such phenotype in the etiology of recurrent psychiatric disorders has been overlooked.
This presentation will center on findings that tie changes in striatal dopamine signaling to reward-relevant behavior using in vivo transgenic strategies, electrophysiological approaches and comprehensive behavioral measures. I will present new data that establish a direct, causal link between membrane lipid composition of discrete subpopulation of dopaminoceptive neurons and motivational deficits and show how alterations of membrane lipid composition can modulate dopamine receptors-dependent signaling and functional endpoints.  The talk will conclude with discussion of how investigations of such protein-lipid interactions for GPCRs represent promising scientific and translational avenues.