For decades, scientific dogma held that the chemicals dopamine and serotonin served as messengers within the central nervous system, allowing brain cells, or neurons, to communicate with each other. Known as neurotransmitters, dopamine and serotonin also contribute to drug addiction and depression.
But neuroscientist Ian Maze, PhD, had a nagging suspicion there was more to their story, and when he established his lab at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2014, he began to build tools that would enable him to explore the full range of their power.