Hi all,
I'm an experimental psychologist (i.e., not a "brain guy")
who has become interested in the neurobiology of drug self-
administration. My questions concern 6-hydroxydopamine. My
understanding is that 6-OHDA is taken up pre-synaptically via re-
uptake mechanisms and kills those neurons. Thus, when one
administers 6-OHDA into discrete brain areas, it kills neurons that
project to those areas, but does not, at least directly, kill neurons
whose cell bodies are IN that area. Is this correct? Another
question is this: Where on neurons is 6-OHDA taken in? I assumed
that it was only near the terminal buttons. If one puts a little 6-
OHDA into, for example, the medial forebrain bundle, is it possible
to kill a bunch of neurons in widely dispersed brain areas? I'm
assuming that most of the MFB consists of axons. Finally, when
one reads that content of DA in an excised brain area is such-and-
such, what is being measured? Would extracellular DA "show up"
in such an analysis? The reason I ask is that when one reads about
6-OHDA being put into a discrete brain area, the authors present
data showing that DA content in that area is reduced. I am
interested in any comments or speculations, even if they are
"outside of the mainstream." Rest assured that I am not a student
trying to plagiarize your answers for a term paper, and any insights
would be gratefully acknowledged in any published papers.
Sincerely,
Glen M. Sizemore, Ph.D.
