The reward generated by social interactions is critical for promoting prosocial behaviors. Here we present evidence that oxytocin (OXT) release in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), a key node of the brain's reward circuitry, is necessary to elicit social reward. During social interactions, activity in paraventricular nucleus (PVN) OXT neurons increased. Direct activation of these neurons in the...

Sudden cardiac death (SCD) due to sustained ventricular tachyarrhythmias (VTA) remains a major public health problem because of poor understanding of the mechanisms. Initiation of VTA in animal models and in patients usually requires intense metabolic or electrical stimuli not often observed for spontaneous arrhythmias, suggesting that profound but clinically silent electrophysiological changes...

Novelty exploration can enhance hippocampal plasticity in animals through dopaminergic neuromodulation arising in the substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area (SN/VTA). This enhancement can outlast the exploration phase by several minutes. Currently, little is known about dopaminergic novelty processing and its relationship to hippocampal function in humans. In two functional magnetic resonance ...

The ventral tegmental area (VTA) plays an essential role in reward and motivation. How the dopamine (DA) and non-DA neurons in the VTA engage in motivation-based locomotor behaviors is not well understood. We recorded activity of putative DA and non-DA neurons simultaneously in the VTA of awake mice engaged in motivated voluntary movements such as wheel running. Our results revealed that VTA no...

Projections from the lateral hypothalamus (LH) to the ventral tegmental area (VTA), containing both GABAergic and glutamatergic components, encode conditioned responses and control compulsive reward-seeking behavior. GABAergic neurons in the LH have been shown to mediate appetitive and feeding-related behaviors. Here we show that the GABAergic component of the LH-VTA pathway supports positive r...

Orexins are associated with drug relapse in rodents. Here, we show that acute restraint stress in mice activates lateral hypothalamic (LH) orexin neurons, increases levels of orexin A and 2-arachidonoylglycerol (2-AG) in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), and reinstates extinguished cocaine-conditioned place preference (CPP). This stress-induced reinstatement of cocaine CPP depends on type 1 ore...

in vivo microdialysis was used to study the effects of morphine on glutamate release from the ventral tegmentum area (vta) in freely moving rats. intraperitoneal (i.p.) injection of acute and repeated morphine at increasing doses significantly enhanced glutamate release. only a minor tolerance developed to this dosage of morphine. ap-s (2-amino-5-phosphonovaleric acid, 0.5 mg/kg i.p.), a nmda r...

This study has examined the functional importance of nucleus accumbens (NAc)-ventral tegmental area (VTA) interactions. As it is known, this interaction is important in associative reward processes. Under urethane anesthesia, extracellular single unit recordings of the shell sub-region of the nucleus accumbens (NAcSh) neurons were employed to determine the functional contributions of the VTA to...

Background: The ventral tegmental area (VTA) is well known for its role in cardiovascular control. It is demonstrated that about 20-30% of the VTA neurons are GABAergic though their role in cardiovascular control is not yet understood. This study is carried out to find the effects of GABA A and GABA B receptors on cardiovascular response of the VTA. Methods: Experiments were performed on uretha...

Ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopaminergic (DAergic) and GABAergic neurons are critically involved in mechanisms of reward, reinforcement and emotional arousal. The hypothalamus regulates the homeostatic drive to eat and sends a massive output to the VTA, including projections from neurons containing orexins, the novel neuropeptides, which potently modulate arousal and feeding. Single-unit extra...