ArticleScientific reports2018
Motor skill learning and reward consumption differentially affect VTA activation.
Article in Scientific reports, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- Reward During Arm Training Improves Impairment and Activity After Stroke: A Randomized Controlled Trial.Neurorehabilitation and neural repair · 2022Trial
- Successful reinforcement history suppresses explicit and implicit error corrections.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Self-Organizing Recruitment of Compensatory Cortical Areas Post-Stroke Can Maximize Residual Motor Performance.IEEE transactions on neural systems and rehabilitation engineering : a publication of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society · 2026Article
- Basal ganglia: an amplifier for preparatory activity in motor control.Biological cybernetics · 2025Article
- Article
- Cross-species dissection of the modular role of the ventral tegmental area in depressive disorders.Neuroscience · 2025Review
- Reward signals in the motor cortex: from biology to neurotechnology.Nature communications · 2025Review
- Dysfunction of motor cortices in Parkinson's disease.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2024Review
- Dopamine receptors of the rodent fastigial nucleus support skilled reaching for goal-directed action.Brain structure & function · 2024Article
- Effects of Voluntary Wheel Running Exercise on Chemotherapy-Impaired Cognitive and Motor Performance in Mice.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- Selective Modulation of Hippocampal Theta Oscillations in Response to Morphine versus Natural Reward.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- The role of ventral tegmental area in chronic stroke rehabilitation: an exploratory study.Frontiers in neurology · 2023Article
- Endogenous dopamine transmission is crucial for motor skill recovery after stroke.IBRO neuroscience reports · 2022Article
- Enhancing Post-Stroke Rehabilitation and Preventing Exo-Focal Dopaminergic Degeneration in Rats-A Role for Substance P.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Article
- Appetite Regulation of TLR4-Induced Inflammatory Signaling.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2021Review
- Vagus Nerve Stimulation Induced Motor Map Plasticity Does Not Require Cortical Dopamine.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2021Article
- TRIM3 attenuates apoptosis in Parkinson's disease via activating PI3K/AKT signal pathway.Aging · 2020Article
- Exercise enhances motor skill learning by neurotransmitter switching in the adult midbrain.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Ventral tegmental area connections to motor and sensory cortical fields in humans.Brain structure & function · 2019Article
- Can Neonatal Systemic Inflammation and Hypoxia Yield a Cerebral Palsy-Like Phenotype in Periadolescent Mice?Molecular neurobiology · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Dopamine release from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) terminals in the primary motor cortex (M1) enables motor skill acquisition. Here, we test the hypothesis that dopaminergic VTA neurons projecting to M1 are activated when rewards are obtained during motor skill acquisition, but not during task execution at plateau performance, or by rewards obtained without performing skilled movements. Rats were trained to perform a skilled reaching task for 3 days (acquisition) or 7 days (plateau). In combination with retrograde labelling of VTA-to-M1 projection neurons, double immunofluorescence for c-fos and tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) was used to assess activation of dopaminergic and non-dopaminergic VTA neurons. Dopaminergic VTA-to-M1 projection neurons were indeed activated during successful motor skill acquisition, but not when rats failed to learn or had reached plateau performance, nor by food rewards alone. By contrast, dopaminergic VTA neurons that did not project to M1 were activated by both skilled reaching and food rewards. Non-dopaminergic neurons were found to be activated by motor task performance at plateau, but not during skill acquisition. These results indicate that distinct populations of VTA neurons are activated by motor skill acquisition and task performance. Moreover, this activation is not merely related to consumption of food rewards.
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