A dopaminergic neuron is a neuron that uses dopamine as a neurotransmitter. The term identifies a chemical signalling property, not a unique shape, firing pattern or psychological experience. A receiving cell's dopamine receptor is different from the dopaminergic neuron that supplies its ligand.
A motivating experiment recorded dopamine-neuron activity while monkeys learned a delayed-response task. A 1993 study found phasic responses to liquid-reward delivery in of neurons during learning, compared with of after task performance was established. Instruction and trigger cues also evoked responses.[ref]
Responses of monkey dopamine neurons to reward and conditioned stimuli during successive steps of learning a delayed response task by Wolfram Schultz and others. Abstract; learning versus established performance, reward and conditioned cues
These are comparisons of reported samples, not proof that the identical neurons were tracked through both populations.The outcome shows why neurotransmitter identity does not determine a response to every event. Timing, learning and task context matter. Nor does a brief change in action potential frequency directly measure the amount of dopamine released at every terminal. Interpreting a recorded cell as a dopaminergic neuron requires an identification method, and evidence from one sampled population should not be generalized to all such neurons.
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