A team of researchers from Duke University Medical Center, the California Institute of Technology, the National Institute of Mental Health and Baylor College of Medicine has found via a new reporter that cholinergic neurons engage the integrated stress response (ISR) to modulate dopamine levels. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their study of the ISR pathway using the new reporter and what they learned. Anna Ingebretson and Julia Lemos with the University of Minnesota have published a Perspectives piece in the same journal issue outlining current research involving striatal cholinergic interneurons and the work by the team on this new effort.