The ventral tegmental area is required for the behavioral and nucleus accumbens neuronal firing responses to incentive cues.

ABSTRACT: Reward-predictive cues exert powerful control over behavioral choice and may be a critical factor in drug addiction. Reward-seeking elicited by predictive cues is facilitated by the release of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens (NAc), yet the contribution of dopamine to the specific NAc firing patterns that underlie goal-directed behavior has remained elusive. We present evidence that subpopulations of NAc neurons that respond to predictive cues require the dopaminergic projection from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) to promote reward-seeking behavior. Rats trained to perform an operant response to a cue to obtain a sucrose reward were implanted with both multiunit recording electrodes in the NAc and microinjection cannulas in the VTA. Both the behavioral response to cues and the cue-evoke

SUBMITTER: Yun IA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6729854 | biostudies-literature | 2004 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature