In a paper published in Nature Communications, Janet Berrios, a graduate student in the Philpot lab, discovered that the loss of UBE3A decreases the release of the GABA neurotransmitter and alters reward-seeking behavior in an important neural pathway once presumed to be principally regulated by the dopamine neurotransmitter.

Loss of UBE3A from TH-expressing neurons suppresses GABA co-release and enhances VTA-NAc optical self-stimulation