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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2008 Dec 1.
Published in final edited form as: Brain Res Rev. 2007 Aug 21;56(2):283–321. doi: 10.1016/j.brainresrev.2007.07.014

Figure 2. DA innervation of BG-thalamocortical circuits.

Figure 2

All ascending mesencephalic DA projections innervate the BG rather widely, while only the ML-DA system projects to the frontal cortex. Although the DA transmission in frontal cortex has received an increasing interest, our paper is mainly focused on the role of DA release in BG. In particular, DA transmission in ventral and dorsal striatal areas (the input areas of BG) modulates the communication between glutamatergic projections arriving from frontal cortex and GABAergic neurons located inside the striatum. In such a way, DA regulates the diffusion of neural activity patterns within basal ganglia-thalamocortical circuits. The figure doesn't show the segregation of BG-thalamocortical circuits described by Alexander and coll. (1986), but the schematic representation can be applied to limbic, associative or motor loops of those circuits.