ABSTRACT
Dopamine is acknowledged to be the neurotransmitter most intimately involved with Parkinson’s disease (PD), and the severe loss of this neurotransmitter has been shown to be associated with most of the primary symptoms of the disease. However, even though James Parkinson described the neurological disease named after him almost two centuries ago, it required the development of relatively modern techniques to identify dopamine as the critical neurotransmitter in PD and to realize the consequent therapeutic advances that were based on this nding. Numerous discoveries, both in animals and man, presented us with the concept of a nigrostriatal pathway that uses dopamine as neurotransmitter, that plays a key role in control of motor function, and that is central to PD. After dopamine became a focus of research related to PD, many advances have been made concerning dopamine receptors and the other neurotransmitters involved in PD. These subjects are covered in other chapters in this book (see Chapters 42, 65, and 66). Chapter 42 deals directly with other neurotransmitters, whereas Chapters 65 and 66 deal with dopamine agonists (DA receptors) and drugs targeting other neurotransmitter systems, respectively.
