{"doi":"10.1016/j.celrep.2020.108492","title":"A Comparison of Dopaminergic and Cholinergic Populations Reveals Unique Contributions of VTA Dopamine Neurons to Short-Term Memory","abstract":"We systematically compare the contributions of two dopaminergic and two cholinergic ascending populations to a spatial short-term memory task in rats. In ventral tegmental area dopamine (VTA-DA) and nucleus basalis cholinergic (NB-ChAT) populations, trial-by-trial fluctuations in activity during the delay period relate to performance with an inverted-U, despite the fact that both populations have low activity during that time. Transient manipulations reveal that only VTA-DA neurons, and not the other three populations we examine, contribute causally and selectively to short-term memory. This contribution is most significant during the delay period, when both increases and decreases in VTA-DA activity impair short-term memory. Our results reveal a surprising dissociation between when VTA-DA neurons are most active and when they have the biggest causal contribution to short-term memory, and they also provide support for classic ideas about an inverted-U relationship between neuromodulation and cognition.","journal":"Cell Reports","year":2020,"id":96849,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":34,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9502,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":480219,"name":"Hee Jae Jang","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":479547,"name":"Sharon Ornelas","orcid":"0000-0001-9441-3030","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":275405,"name":"Weston Fleming","orcid":"0000-0002-4792-1929","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":282977,"name":"Daniel Fürth","orcid":"0000-0002-6017-3419","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":480220,"name":"Jennifer L. Au","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":479548,"name":"Akhil Bandi","orcid":"0000-0002-2239-8799","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":366125,"name":"Esteban A. Engel","orcid":"0000-0003-1115-9474","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":275407,"name":"Ilana B. Witten","orcid":"0000-0003-0548-2160","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":479546,"name":"Jung Yoon Choi","orcid":"0000-0001-6345-4876","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":109,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T22:35:06.014648Z","pmid":"33326775","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}