Background Stress constitutes a risk factor across several psychiatric disorders. Moreover, females are more susceptible to stress-related disorders, such as depression, than males. Although dopamine system underactivation is implicated in the pathophysiology of depression, little is known about the female dopamine system at baseline and post-stress. Methods The effects of chronic mild stress...

An autoshaping procedure, in which presentation of a retractable lever signalled food delivery, was used to assess the effects of ventral tegmental area lesions on appetitive classically conditioned responses in 28 rats. Rats with ventral tegmental area lesions did not differ from sham-lesioned rats in acquiring classically conditioned lever press responses, or in learning to withold these resp...

Glutamate signaling in prefrontal cortex and ventral tegmental area plays an important role in the molecular and behavioral plasticity associated with addiction to drugs of abuse. The current study investigated the expression and postsynaptic density redistribution of glutamate receptors and synaptic scaffolding proteins in dorsomedial and ventromedial prefrontal cortex and ventral tegmental ar...

Perfusion of the D1 agonist, SKF-82958, through a microdialysis probe implanted in the ventral tegmental area produced a dose-dependent increase in extracellular glutamate and GABA. The increase in extracellular glutamate occurred at approximately 30x lower dose than the elevation in GABA. The increase in extracellular glutamate by SKF-82958 was blocked by coperfusion of the D1 antagonist, SCH-...

Opioid receptors in the ventral tegmental area, predominantly the mu-opioid receptors, have been suggested to modulate reinforcement sensitivity for both opioid and non-opioid drugs of abuse. The present study was conducted to study signal transduction proteins, which may mediate the functioning of mu-opioid receptors in the neurons of the ventral tegmental area. Therefore, brain slices of the ...

Recent studies suggest that memory formation in the hippocampus is modulated by the motivational significance of events, allowing past experience to adaptively guide behavior. The effects of motivation on memory are thought to depend on interactions between the hippocampus, the ventral tegmental area (VTA), and the nucleus accumbens (NAcc). Indeed, animal studies reveal anatomical pathways for ...