ReviewNeuron2025
The role of mesolimbic circuitry in aversive signaling and opioid dependence.
Review in Neuron, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 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
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Effort and substance use: differentiating tobacco use through reinforcement learning of effort based decision making.Journal of computational neuroscience · 2026Article
- Can the incentive-sensitization theory of addiction incorporate addiction to opioid drugs?Psychopharmacology · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Positive reinforcement via mu-opioid receptor-mediated disinhibition of ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine neurons is crucial in opioid use disorder (OUD). However, VTA dopamine neurons are more heterogeneous than initially thought, both at the molecular and computational levels. Besides encoding reward prediction error, subpopulations of dopamine neurons have also been proposed to encode salience and aversion. How opioid use alters these distinct encoding properties remains unclear. Negative reinforcement-learning to avoid adverse outcomes like withdrawal-also drives chronic drug use, implicating the mesolimbic dopamine system in both positive and negative reinforcement in OUD. This review explores how chronic opioid use modifies heterogeneous VTA neuron populations, enhancing sensitivity to aversive stimuli, promoting negative affect, and motivating withdrawal-avoidance behaviors. We also examine how chronic pain may amplify these effects and discuss the importance of charting circuit-level interactions between chronic pain and OUD for clinical translation.
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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.