Preach. I am finding The Best Model Fit and the perfect has become the enemy of the good.

Thank you, Arif!!

Thanks, Kavya!!

Thank you, Orna!

Thanks, Kurt!! ☺️

Such a great question! I’d love to know the answer to that.

Thank you, Mark!!

Thanks, Ben!!

Many thanks to our coauthors, the undergraduate students and technicians who contributed to this work, and support from the NIH and @simonsfoundation.org.

#blueprint 7/7

Altogether, this suggests that estradiol, by way of its receptors in the ventral tegmental area, modulates learning!

#blueprint 6/7

Lastly, knocking down expression of estrogen receptors in the ventral tegmental area, where dopamine transporter expression could be regulated by estradiol, suppressed learning.

#blueprint 5/7

Next, mass spectrometry revealed that dopamine transporters in the nucleus accumbens core are reduced around the time estradiol peaks, allowing for greater phasic dopamine encoding of reward prediction errors.

#blueprint 4/7

First, we found that with more estradiol, trial initiation times are more sensitive to changing reward rates. We then found that this enhanced learning about reward rate could be explained by stronger reward prediction errors in the nucleus accumbens core.

#blueprint 3/7

Take a journey with us from serum estradiol to its relationship to striatal protein expression to how that modulates dopamine dynamics, which in turn enhances learning about reward rates – all tied together with a descriptive computational model!

#blueprint 2/7

I mean, we have a city rat czar. What other animal deserves this much attention.