Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews
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Neurosci Biobehav Rev · Jan 2004
ReviewVentral striatal control of appetitive motivation: role in ingestive behavior and reward-related learning.
The nucleus accumbens is a brain region that participates in the control of behaviors related to natural reinforcers, such as ingestion, sexual behavior, incentive and instrumental learning, and that also plays a role in addictive processes. This paper comprises a review of work from our laboratory that focuses on two main research areas: (i). the role of the nucleus accumbens in food motivation, and (ii). its putative functions in cellular plasticity underlying appetitive learning. First, work within a number of different behavioral paradigms has shown that accumbens neurochemical systems play specific and dissociable roles in different aspects of food seeking and food intake, and part of this function depends on integration with the lateral hypothalamus and amygdala. ⋯ This receptor stimulation triggers intracellular cascades that involve protein phosphorylation and new protein synthesis. It is hypothesized that activity in this distributed network (including D1 receptor activity) computes coincident events and thus enhances the probability that temporally related actions and events (e.g. lever pressing and delivery of reward) become associated. Such basic mechanisms of plasticity within this reinforcement learning network also appear to be profoundly affected in addiction.