The Arousal-motor Hypothesis of Dopamine Function: Evidence that Dopamine Facilitates Reward Seeking in Part by Maintaining Arousal

Nucleus Accumbens Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone Neurons Projecting to the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis Promote Wakefulness and Positive Affective State

The nucleus accumbens (NAc) plays an important role in various emotional and motivational behaviors that rely on heightened wakefulness. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the relationship between arousal and emotion regulation in NAc remain unclear. Here, we investigated the roles of a specific subset of inhibitory corticotropin-releasing hormone neurons in the NAc (NAcCRH) in regulating arousal and emotional behaviors in mice. We found an increased activity of NAcCRH neurons during wakefulness and rewarding stimulation. Activation of NAcCRH neurons converts NREM or REM sleep to wakefulness, while inhibition of these neurons attenuates wakefulness. Remarkably, activation of NAcCRH neurons induces a place preference response (PPR) and decreased basal anxiety level, whereas their inactivation induces a place aversion response and anxious state. NAcCRH neurons are identified as the major NAc projection neurons to the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST). Furthermore, activation of the NAcCRH-BNST pathway similarly induced wakefulness and positive emotional behaviors. Taken together, we identified a basal forebrain CRH pathway that promotes the arousal associated with positive affective states.

Nucleus accumbens and dorsal medial striatal dopamine and neural activity are essential for action sequence performance

Separable striatal circuits have unique functions in Pavlovian and instrumental behaviors but how these roles relate to performance of sequences of actions with and without associated cues are less clear. Here, we tested whether dopamine transmission and neural activity more generally in three striatal subdomains are necessary for performance of an action chain leading to reward delivery. Male and female Long-Evans rats were trained to press a series of three spatially distinct levers to receive reward. We assessed the contribution of neural activity or dopamine transmission within each striatal subdomain when progression through the action sequence was explicitly cued and in the absence of cues. Behavior in both task variations was substantially impacted following microinfusion of the dopamine antagonist, flupenthixol, into nucleus accumbens core (NAc) or dorsomedial striatum (DMS), with impairments in sequence timing and numbers of rewards earned after NAc flupenthixol. In contrast, after pharmacological inactivation to suppress overall activity, there was minimal impact on total rewards earned. Instead, inactivation of both NAc and DMS impaired sequence timing and led to sequence errors in the uncued, but not cued task. There was no impact of dopamine antagonism or reversible inactivation of dorsolateral striatum on either cued or uncued action sequence completion. These results highlight an essential contribution of NAc and DMS dopamine systems in motivational and performance aspects of chains of actions, whether cued or internally generated, as well as the impact of intact NAc and DMS function for correct sequence performance.

Metabolic hormone action in the VTA: Reward-directed behavior and mechanistic insights

Dysfunctional signaling in midbrain reward circuits perpetuates diseases characterized by compulsive overconsumption of rewarding substances such as substance abuse, binge eating disorder, and obesity. Ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopaminergic activity serves as an index for how rewarding stimuli are perceived and triggers behaviors necessary to obtain future rewards. The evolutionary linking of reward with seeking and consuming palatable foods ensured an organism's survival, and hormone systems that regulate appetite concomitantly developed to regulate motivated behaviors. Today, these same mechanisms serve to regulate reward-directed behavior around food, drugs, alcohol, and social interactions. Understanding how hormonal regulation of VTA dopaminergic output alters motivated behaviors is essential to leveraging therapeutics that target these hormone systems to treat addiction and disordered eating. This review will outline our current understanding of the mechanisms underlying VTA action of the metabolic hormones ghrelin, glucagon-like peptide-1, amylin, leptin, and insulin to regulate behavior around food and drugs of abuse, highlighting commonalities and differences in how these five hormones ultimately modulate VTA dopamine signaling.