Team Root

Cognitive dysfunction significantly reduces quality of life for Parkinson’s patients and caretakers. We show that cognitive symptoms are controlled by ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine neurons, a genetically-defined subset of which degrades in Parkinson’s Disease (PD). Glutamate-dopamine co transmitting neurons preferentially survive in PD over nonglutamate-dopamine neurons. We hypothesize that VTA dopamine cell-type imbalance causes cognitive dysfunction. We will identify how surviving genetically-distinct VTA dopaminergic cell-types and targets are altered physiologically, transcriptionally, and functionally in their processing of cognitive information, as well as how they may be leveraged to reduce PD cognitive symptoms.