ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2020
Neurons of the Ventral Tegmental Area Encode Individual Differences in Motivational "Wanting" for Reward Cues.
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. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 30 citations in OpenAlex.
- Regulation of amygdala and dopamine system in naïve and chronic alcohol states.Alcohol (Fayetteville, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- A novel superior colliculus circuit mediates visual cue-driven methamphetamine taking and seeking.Acta pharmacologica Sinica · 2026Article
- Phasic dopamine encodes persistent attraction to reward cues.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Generalized cue reactivity in rat dopamine neurons after opioids.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Aberrant encoding of event saliency in the orbitofrontal cortex following loss of the psychiatric-associated circular RNA, circHomer1.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
- VTA dopamine neurons are hyperexcitable in 3xTg-AD mice due to casein kinase 2-dependent SK channel dysfunction.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Generalized cue reactivity in dopamine neurons after opioids.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- The effect of reward and voluntary choice on the motor learning of serial reaction time task.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- VTA dopamine neurons are hyperexcitable in 3xTg-AD mice due to casein kinase 2-dependent SK channel dysfunction.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Inhibition of Dopamine Neurons Prevents Incentive Value Encoding of a Reward Cue: With Revelations from Deep Phenotyping.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Article
- Instructed motivational states bias reinforcement learning and memory formation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- From Prediction to Action: Dissociable Roles of Ventral Tegmental Area and Substantia Nigra Dopamine Neurons in Instrumental Reinforcement.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Article
- Inhibition of dopamine neurons prevents incentive value encoding of a reward cue: With revelations from deep phenotyping.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Nicotinic and muscarinic acetylcholine receptor antagonism dose-dependently decreases sign- but not goal-tracking behavior in male rats.Psychopharmacology · 2023Article
- Ventral pallidal regulation of motivated behaviors and reinforcement.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2023Review
- Historical and Modern Evidence for the Role of Reward Circuitry in Emergence.Anesthesiology · 2022Review
- The Neurobiology of Behavior and Its Applicability for Animal Welfare: A Review.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Review
- Distinct role of nucleus accumbens D2-MSN projections to ventral pallidum in different phases of motivated behavior.Cell reports · 2022Article
- Dopamine Circuit Mechanisms of Addiction-Like Behaviors.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It has been argued that the dopaminergic system is involved in the attribution of motivational value to reward predictive cues as well as prediction error. To evaluate, dopamine neurons were recorded from male rats performing a Pavlovian approach task containing cues that have both "predictive" and "incentive" properties. All animals learned the predictive nature of the cue (illuminated lever entry into cage), but some also found the cue to be attractive and were motivated toward it ("sign-trackers," STs). "Goal-trackers" (GTs) predominantly approached the location of reward receptacle. Rats were implanted with tetrodes for neural electrophysiological recordings in the ventral tegmental area. Cells were characterized by spike waveform shape and firing rate. Firing rates and magnitudes of responses in relation to Pavlovian behaviors, cue presentation, and reward delivery were assessed. We identified 103 dopamine and 141 nondopamine neurons. GTs and STs both showed responses to the initial lever presentation (CS1) and lever retraction (CS2). However, higher firing rates were sustained during the lever interaction period only in STs. Further, dopamine cells of STs showed a significantly higher proportion of cells responding to both CS1 and CS2. These are the first results to show that neurons from the VTA encode both predictive and incentive cues, support an important role for dopamine neurons in the attribution of incentive salience to reward-paired cues, and underscore the consequences of potential differences in motivational behavior between individuals.
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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.