Evidence supports at least two methods for learning about reward and punishment and
making predictions for guiding actions. One method, called model-free, progressively …

The study of the neural bases of eating behavior, hunger, and reward has consistently
implicated the lateral hypothalamus (LH) and its interactions with mesocorticolimbic circuitry …

Drug addiction is a neuropsychiatric disorder with grave personal consequences that has an
extraordinary global economic impact. Despite decades of research, the options available to …

Cues associated with rewards, such as food or drugs of abuse, can themselves acquire
motivational properties. Acting as incentive stimuli, such cues can exert powerful control …

Rationale Contemporary animal models of cocaine addiction focus on increasing the
amount of drug consumption to produce addiction-like behavior. However, another critical …

When exposed to the sights, sounds, smells and/or places that have been associated with
rewards, such as food or drugs, some individuals have difficulty resisting the temptation to …

Drug-associated cues can acquire powerful motivational control over the behavior of
addicts, and can contribute to relapse via multiple, dissociable mechanisms. Most preclinical …

Highlights•There is considerable individual variation in conditioned responses to reward
cues.•Cues can evoke simple conditioned responses and/or complex motivational …

Environmental stimuli are powerful mediators of craving and relapse in substance‐abuse
disorders. This review examined how animal models have been used to investigate the …

The incentive salience sensitization (ISS) theory of addiction holds that addictive behavior
stems from the ability of drugs to progressively sensitize the brain circuitry that mediates …