chasingit33 - 13-4-2009 at 04:14
specifically the "tone" part.
never encountered that...i imagine it has to do with rate or dopamine production or something?
"Through a direct effect on anterior pituitary lactotrophs,
DA inhibits the basally high-secretory tone of the cell."
"A variety of other modulators of
prolactin secretion act at the hypothalamic level by either disinhibition of
the dopaminergic tone (e.g. serotonin, GABA, oestrogens and opioids) or
by reinforcing it (e.g. substance P)."
chemrox - 13-4-2009 at 21:43
sounds like creative writing .. maybe it means stuff that makes you feel good
Nicodem - 14-4-2009 at 01:47
It is not a stuff, it is a concept.
As far as I know, "dopaminergic tone" is more or less the same as "dopaminergic activity" or "dopaminergic transmition", all quite fuzzy concepts. For
example: an increase in dopaminergic tone in the stomach would make you puke; a decrease in the dopaminergic tone by the basal ganglia loss of
activity would cause akinesia; an increase in dopaminergic tone in the dopaminergic projections to the cortex would make you behave like an ape-like
jerk; and so on...
The point is that this concept is not specific (it says nothing about which dopaminergic transmittion system on which type of neurons, in which part
of the nervous system, has changed in modulation). But this type of concepts gained popularity, because it is something that can be measured simply
and empirically (by tracking dopamine metabolites or by monitoring secondary effects, for example).