Recent evidence has shown that the dorsal striatum of the rat is arranged as a patchwork of domains that exhibit distinct dopamine kinetics and concentrations. This raises the pressing question of how these distinct domains are maintained, especially if dopamine is able to diffuse through the extracellular space. Diffusion between the domains would eliminate the concentration differences and, thereby, the domains themselves. The present study is a closer examination of dopamine's ability to diffuse in the extracellular space. We used voltammetry to record dopamine overflow in dorsal striatum while stimulating the medial forebrain bundle over a range of stimulus currents and frequencies. We also examined the effects of drugs that modulated the dopamine release (raclopride and quinpirole) and uptake (nomifensine). Examining the details of the temporal features of the evoked profiles reveals no clear evidence for long-distance diffusion of dopamine between fast and slow domains, even though uptake inhibition by nomifensine clearly prolongs the time that dopamine resides in the extracellular space. Our observations support the conclusion that striatal tissue has the capacity to retain dopamine molecules, thereby limiting its tendency to diffuse through the extracellular space. KEYWORDS: Dopamine, dopamine transporter, diffusion, evoked release, voltammetry, dorsal striatum C entral dopamine (DA) systems participate in numerous aspects of brain function, 1,2 and their dysfunction contributes to a broad array of disorders and diseases including Parkinson's disease, 3 schizophrenia, 4 and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. 5 Broadly speaking, the physiological function of the DA molecules themselves is to bind to post-and presynaptic receptors to modulate the activity of the postsynaptic targets 6 and to self-regulate DAergic activity, 7 respectively. Consequently, numerous drugs act by modulating extracellular DA concentrations (e.g., L-DOPA, MAO inhibitors, and inhibitors of the dopamine transporter (DAT) 8−11 ) or by modulating or mimicking the binding of DA to its receptors (DA agonists and antagonists). 12,13 Some of the drugs that target DA systems have important therapeutic applications 14,15 while others have high potential for illicit abuse: 16−18 some therapeutic drugs are also abused. 19 Thus, it is significant to know the extracellular DA concentration per se, to know the kinetics of DA release and clearance that determine the concentration, and to know the actions of drugs that target DA systems.Recently, we have demonstrated that the DA terminal field in the rat dorsal striatum contains a patchwork of kinetic spatial domains. The fast and slow domains were brought to light by recordings of extracellular DA with fast-scan cyclic voltammetry (FSCV) at carbon fiber microelectrodes during electrical stimulation of the medial forebrain bundle (MFB). The extracellular concentration of DA, the kinetics of DA release and clearance, the short-term plasticity of DA release, and the actions of DA-ta...