Dopamine regulates reward-related behavior through the mesolimbic dopaminergic
pathway. Stress affects dopamine levels and dopaminergic neuronal activity in the …

The striatum is essential for learning which actions lead to reward and for implementing
those actions. Decades of experimental and theoretical work have led to several influential …

Drug consumption is driven by a drug's pharmacological effects, which are experienced as
rewarding, and is influenced by genetic, developmental, and psychosocial factors that …

It is becoming clearer how neurobiological mechanisms generate 'liking'and
'wanting'components of food reward. Mesocorticolimbic mechanisms that enhance …

Behaviours such as eating, copulating, defending oneself or taking addictive drugs begin
with a motivation to initiate the behaviour. Both this motivational drive and the behaviours …

At the core of value-based learning is the nucleus accumbens (NAc). D1-and D2-receptor-
containing medium spiny neurons (MSNs) in the NAc core are hypothesized to have …

The human social brain is complex. Current knowledge fails to define the neurobiological
processes underlying social behaviour involving the (patho-) physiological mechanisms that …

Over the past 10 years, the development and convergence of microbial opsin engineering,
modular genetic methods for cell-type targeting and optical strategies for guiding light …

The nucleus accumbens is a major input structure of the basal ganglia and integrates
information from cortical and limbic structures to mediate goal-directed behaviors. Chronic …

Loss of dopamine in Parkinson's disease is hypothesized to impede movement by inducing
hypo-and hyperactivity in striatal spiny projection neurons (SPNs) of the direct (dSPNs) and …