Neuroplasticity in the Mesolimbic System Induced by Natural Reward and Subsequent Reward Abstinence

Pain-induced analgesia mediated by mesolimbic reward circuits.

We tested the hypothesis that noxious stimuli induce pain modulation by activation of supraspinal structures. We found that intense noxious stimuli (i.e., subdermal injection of capsaicin or paw immersion in hot water) induced profound attenuation of the jaw-opening reflex in the anesthetized rat; forepaw subdermal capsaicin also elevated the mechanical hindpaw-withdrawal threshold in the awake...

Mesolimbic recruitment by nondrug rewards in detoxified alcoholics: effort anticipation, reward anticipation, and reward delivery.

Aberrant sensitivity of incentive neurocircuitry to nondrug rewards has been suggested as either a risk factor for or consequence of drug addiction. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we tested whether alcohol-dependent patients (ADP: n = 29) showed altered recruitment of ventral striatal (VS) incentive neurocircuitry compared to controls (n = 23) by: (1) cues to respond for monetary ...

Humor Modulates the Mesolimbic Reward Centers

Humor plays an essential role in many facets of human life including psychological, social, and somatic functioning. Recently, neuroimaging has been applied to this critical human attribute, shedding light on the affective, cognitive, and motor networks involved in humor processing. To date, however, researchers have failed to demonstrate the subcortical correlates of the most fundamental featu...

New insights into the specificity and plasticity of reward and aversion encoding in the mesolimbic system.

The mesocorticolimbic system, consisting, at its core, of the ventral tegmental area, the nucleus accumbens, and medial prefrontal cortex, has historically been investigated primarily for its role in positively motivated behaviors and reinforcement learning, and its dysfunction in addiction, schizophrenia, depression, and other mood disorders. Recently, researchers have undertaken a more compre...

Asymptotic Behavior of Multivariate Reward Processes with Nonlinear Reward Functions