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Astrocyte Sensitivity To Dopamine In Culture And Ex Vivo, Ashley L. Galloway

Theses and Dissertations

Dopamine is critical for processing of reward and etiology of drug addiction. Astrocytes throughout the brain express dopamine receptors, but consequences of astrocytic dopamine receptor signaling are not well established. This thesis illustrates effects of dopamine on cultured astrocytes and astrocytes in brain slices (ex vivo). In striatal cultures, extracellular dopamine triggered changes in astrocytic Ca²⁺ signaling and rapid concentration-dependent stellation of astrocytic processes that was not a result of dopamine oxidation, but instead relied on both cAMP-dependent and cAMP-independent dopamine receptor signaling. To isolate possible mechanisms underlying these structural and functional changes, whole-genome RNA sequencing was …