Nucleus accumbens core dopamine signaling tracks the need-based motivational value of food-paired cues.

ABSTRACT: Environmental reward-predictive stimuli provide a major source of motivation for instrumental reward-seeking activity and this has been linked to dopamine signaling in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) core. This cue-induced incentive motivation can be quite general, not restricted to instrumental actions that earn the same unique reward, and is also typically regulated by one's current need state, such that cues only motivate actions when this is adaptive. But it remains unknown whether cue-evoked dopamine signaling is similarly regulated by need state. Here, we used fast-scan cyclic voltammetry to monitor dopamine concentration changes in the NAc core of rats during a Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer task in which the motivating influence of two cues, each signaling a distinct food reward (s

SUBMITTER: Aitken TJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4819964 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature