Simultaneous dopamine and single-unit recordings reveal accumbens GABAergic responses: implications for intracranial self-stimulation.

ABSTRACT: Intracranial self-stimulation (ICS) is a motivated behavior that results from contingent activation of the brain reward system. ICS with stimulating electrodes placed in the medial forebrain bundle (MFB) is particularly robust. However, the neurons that course through this pathway use a variety of neurotransmitters including dopamine and GABA. For this reason, the neurotransmitters that are central to this behavior, and the specific roles that they subserve, remain unclear. Here, we used extracellular electrophysiology and cyclic voltammetry at the same electrode in awake rats to simultaneously examine cell firing and dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) during ICS and noncontingent stimulation of the MFB. ICS elicited dopamine release in the NAc and produced coincident time-loc

SUBMITTER: Cheer JF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1323210 | biostudies-literature | 2005 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature