 Dopaminergic neurons (dopamine-producing nerve cells) are comparatively few in number—a total of around 400,000 in the human brain—and their cell bodies are confined in groups to a few relatively small brain areas.However their axons project to many other brain areas, and they exert powerful effects on their targets.These dopaminergic cell groups were first mapped in 1964 by Annica Dahlström and Kjell Fuxe, who assigned them labels starting with the letter "A" (for "aminergic").