ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2020
Medial Nucleus Accumbens Projections to the Ventral Tegmental Area Control Food Consumption.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 29 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 47 citations in OpenAlex.
- Striatal control of amygdalar acetylcholine release during salience-associated processing.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Article
- Divergent Roles of Nucleus Accumbens D1- and D2-MSNs in Regulating Hedonic Feeding.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Metabolic regulation of synaptic plasticity in anorexia nervosa.Frontiers in synaptic neuroscience · 2026Review
- Exercise modulates food reward: neurobiological mechanisms and implications for weight management.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Review
- Reduced Ventral Tegmental Area GABA neuron output contributes to hyperactivity in the activity-based anorexia model in female mice.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Medial nucleus accumbens dopamine receptors modulate motivation for wheel running in male mice.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Article
- The GLP-1R Agonist Semaglutide Reduces Motivated Running and Alters Dopamine Dynamics in the Nucleus Accumbens.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Striatal astrocytes modulate behavioral flexibility and whole-body metabolism in mice.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Endogenous opioid receptors and the feast or famine of maladaptive feeding.Nature communications · 2025Review
- Comparison of dopamine release and uptake parameters across sex, species and striatal subregions.The European journal of neuroscience · 2024Article
- A subset of dopamine receptor-expressing neurons in the nucleus accumbens controls feeding and energy homeostasis.Nature metabolism · 2024Article
- A bistable inhibitory optoGPCR for multiplexed optogenetic control of neural circuits.Nature methods · 2024Article
- Lack of Bmal1 leads to changes in rhythmicity and impairs motivation towards natural stimuli.Open biology · 2024Article
- Current perspectives on brain circuits involved in food addiction-like behaviors.Journal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996) · 2024Review
- Nucleus accumbens D1- and D2-expressing neurons control the balance between feeding and activity-mediated energy expenditure.Nature communications · 2024Article
- The nucleus accumbens shell: a neural hub at the interface of homeostatic and hedonic feeding.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Review
- The nucleus accumbens in reward and aversion processing: insights and implications.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2024Review
- Distinct cholinergic circuits underlie discrete effects of reward on attention.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2024Review
- Neuropeptides Modulate Feeding via the Dopamine Reward Pathway.Neurochemical research · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Decades of research have shown that the NAc is a critical region influencing addiction, mood, and food consumption through its effects on reinforcement learning, motivation, and hedonic experience. Pharmacological studies have demonstrated that inhibition of the NAc shell induces voracious feeding, leading to the hypothesis that the inhibitory projections that emerge from the NAc normally act to restrict feeding. While much of this work has focused on projections to the lateral hypothalamus, the role of NAc projections to the VTA in the control food intake has been largely unexplored. Using a retrograde viral labeling technique and real-time monitoring of neural activity with fiber photometry, we find that medial NAc shell projections to the VTA (mNAc→VTA) are inhibited during food-seeking and food consumption in male mice. We also demonstrate that this circuit bidirectionally controls feeding: optogenetic activation of NAc projections to the VTA inhibits food-seeking and food intake (in both sexes), while optogenetic inhibition of this circuit potentiates food-seeking behavior. Additionally, we show that activity of the NAc to VTA pathway is necessary for adaptive inhibition of food intake in response to external cues. These data provide new insight into NAc control over feeding in mice, and contribute to an emerging literature elucidating the role of inhibitory midbrain feedback within the mesolimbic circuit.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.