ArticleFrontiers in behavioral neuroscience2013
The nucleus accumbens as a nexus between values and goals in goal-directed behavior: a review and a new hypothesis.
Article in Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 80 papers.
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Who cites it
80 citing papers in PubMed.
- Heterosynaptic Interactions between the Dorsal and Ventral Hippocampus in Individual Medium Spiny Neurons of the Nucleus Accumbens Ventromedial Shell.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- A ventral tegmental area GABAergic projection to the ventral pallidum regulates value-based decision making in mice.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Modeling metacognition and executive functions in the metacognitive wisconsin card sorting test using the neuropsychological digital-twin method.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The neural basis of explicit and implicit emotion regulation: a coordinate-based meta-analysis.Oxford open neuroscience · 2026Review
- From avoidance to new action: the multifaceted role of the striatal indirect pathway.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2025Review
- Heterosynaptic interactions between dorsal and ventral hippocampus in individual medium spiny neurons of the nucleus accumbens ventromedial shell.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Left Ventral Caudate Functional Connectivity Mediates the Relationship Between Habitual Responding and Alcohol Use.The European journal of neuroscience · 2025Article
- Astrocyte ensembles manipulated with AstroLight tune cue-motivated behavior.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
- An experimental and computational investigation of executive functions and inner speech in schizophrenia spectrum disorders.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Differential Effects of Prenatal Buprenorphine and Methadone on Postnatal Growth and Gene Expression in the Nucleus Accumbens.Developmental psychobiology · 2025Article
- Localization and connections of the tail of caudate and caudal putamen in mouse brain.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2025Article
- Hormonal and structural transformations in the caregiver's brain: Examining themes in parental neurobiology.AIMS neuroscience · 2025Review
- Slow and fast cortical cholinergic arousal is reduced in a mouse model of focal seizures with impaired consciousness.Cell reports · 2024Article
- Basolateral amygdala inputs to the nucleus accumbens shell modulate the consolidation of cued-response and inhibitory avoidance learning.Neurobiology of learning and memory · 2024Article
- A hippocampus-accumbens code guides goal-directed appetitive behavior.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Effects of Maternal Separation on Effort-based Responding for Sucrose Are Associated with c-Fos Expression in the Nucleus Accumbens Core.Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Reorganization of structural connectivity in the brain supports preservation of cognitive ability in healthy aging.Network neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2024Article
- The mesolimbic system and the loss of higher order network features in schizophrenia when learning without reward.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Aberrations in temporal dynamics of cognitive processing induced by Parkinson's disease and Levodopa.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Astrocyte activities in the external globus pallidus regulate action-selection strategies in reward-seeking behaviors.Science advances · 2023Article
20 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Abstract
Goal-directed behavior is a fundamental means by which animals can flexibly solve the challenges posed by variable external and internal conditions. Recently, the processes and brain mechanisms underlying such behavior have been extensively studied from behavioral, neuroscientific and computational perspectives. This research has highlighted the processes underlying goal-directed behavior and associated brain systems including prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia and, in particular therein, the nucleus accumbens (NAcc). This paper focusses on one particular process at the core of goal-directed behavior: how motivational value is assigned to goals on the basis of internal states and environmental stimuli, and how this supports goal selection processes. Various biological and computational accounts have been given of this problem and of related multiple neural and behavior phenomena, but we still lack an integrated hypothesis on the generation and use of value for goal selection. This paper proposes an hypothesis that aims to solve this problem and is based on this key elements: (a) amygdala and hippocampus establish the motivational value of stimuli and goals; (b) prefrontal cortex encodes various types of action outcomes; (c) NAcc integrates different sources of value, representing them in terms of a common currency with the aid of dopamine, and thereby plays a major role in selecting action outcomes within prefrontal cortex. The "goals" pursued by the organism are the outcomes selected by these processes. The hypothesis is developed in the context of a critical review of relevant biological and computational literature which offer it support. The paper shows how the hypothesis has the potential to integrate existing interpretations of motivational value and goal selection.
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