ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2014
Opioid hedonic hotspot in nucleus accumbens shell: mu, delta, and kappa maps for enhancement of sweetness "liking" and "wanting".
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 205 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
205 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 402 citations in OpenAlex.
- A review of the kappa opioid receptor system in opioid use.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Hunger and BMI modulate neural responses to sweet stimuli: fMRI meta-analysis.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2020Pooled it
- The anticipation and outcome phases of reward and loss processing: A neuroimaging meta-analysis of the monetary incentive delay task.Human brain mapping · 2018Pooled it
- The acute effects of nicotine on corticostriatal responses to distinct phases of reward processing.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2020Trial
- Dopaminergic Modulation of Decision Making and Subjective Well-Being.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2015Trial
- Beyond dopamine: Broader neuromodulatory contributions in sign- and goal-tracking.Psychopharmacology · 2026Review
- Three dimensional reconstruction of the human nucleus accumbens reveals topographic organization and molecular heterogeneity of D1-islands across the anterior posterior axis.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Can the incentive-sensitization theory of addiction incorporate addiction to opioid drugs?Psychopharmacology · 2026Review
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- Spatiomolecular mapping reveals anatomical organization of heterogeneous cell types in the human nucleus accumbens.Neuron · 2026Article
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- Profiling Endogenous Opioid Peptide Release from Adrenal Chromaffin Cells.ACS chemical neuroscience · 2026Article
- Hedonic hotspot in rat olfactory tubercle: map for mu-opioid, orexin, and muscimol enhancement of sucrose 'liking'.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Effects of kappa-opioid receptor stimulation on addiction-related behavior in female rats: differences along the rostro-caudal axis of the nucleus accumbens shell.Psychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Diminished anticipatory pleasure predicts anhedonia in women with endometrisois: a case-control study.BMC women's health · 2026Article
- Exploring wanting and liking during positive human-animal interactions.Psychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Neurobiological Consequences of High-Fat High-Sugar Diets on the Mesocorticolimbic System: a Narrative Review.Current nutrition reports · 2026Review
- Sexually-motivated song correlates with opioid- and dopamine-related gene expression in the rostral nucleus accumbens of male European starlings.Behavioural brain research · 2026Article
- Kappa opioid receptor control of motivated behavior revisited.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Review
145 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
A specialized cubic-millimeter hotspot in the rostrodorsal quadrant of medial shell in nucleus accumbens (NAc) of rats may mediate opioid enhancement of gustatory hedonic impact or "liking". Here, we selectively stimulated the three major subtypes of opioid receptors via agonist microinjections [mu (DAMGO), delta (DPDPE), or kappa (U50488H)] and constructed anatomical maps for functional localizations of consequent changes in hedonic "liking" (assessed by affective orofacial reactions to sucrose taste) versus "wanting" (assessed by changes in food intake). Results indicated that the NAc rostrodorsal quadrant contains a shared opioid hedonic hotspot that similarly mediates enhancements of sucrose "liking" for mu, delta, and kappa stimulations. Within the rostrodorsal hotspot boundaries each type of stimulation generated at least a doubling or higher enhancement of hedonic reactions, with comparable intensities for all three types of opioid stimulation. By contrast, a negative hedonic coldspot was mapped in the caudal half of medial shell, where all three types of opioid stimulation suppressed "liking" reactions to approximately one-half normal levels. Different anatomical patterns were produced for stimulation of food "wanting", reflected in food intake. Altogether, these results indicate that the rostrodorsal hotspot in medial shell is unique for generating opioid-induced hedonic enhancement, and add delta and kappa signals to mu as hedonic generators within the hotspot. Also, the identification of a separable NAc caudal coldspot for hedonic suppression, and separate NAc opioid mechanisms for controlling food "liking" versus "wanting" further highlights NAc anatomical heterogeneity and localizations of function within subregions of medial shell.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.