Reward Anticipation Is Encoded Differently by Adolescent Ventral Tegmental Area Neurons.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Elucidating the neurobiology of the adolescent brain is fundamental to our understanding of the etiology of psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and addiction, the symptoms of which often manifest during this developmental period. Dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) are strongly implicated in adolescent behavioral and psychiatric vulnerabilities, but little is known about how adolescent VTA neurons encode information during motivated behavior.

Methods

We recorded daily from VTA neurons in adolescent and adult rats during learning and maintenance of a cued, reward-motivated instrumental task and extinction from this task.

Results

During performance of the same motivated behavior, identical events were encoded differently by adult and

SUBMITTER: Kim Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4636980 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature