The dopaminergic system is involved in reward encoding and reinforcement learning. Dopaminergic neurons from this system in the substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area complex (SN/VTA) fire in response to unexpected reinforcing cues. The goal of this study was to investigate whether individuals can gain voluntary control of SN/VTA activity, thereby potentially enhancing dopamine release to targ...

The ventral tegmental area (VTA) plays a critical role in motivated behavior. However, it remains unclear whether intact VTA function is necessary for motivated behavior to seek contexts repeatedly paired with natural stimuli and/or pharmacological stimuli. In the present study, conditioned place preference (CPP) was induced with highly salient natural or drug stimuli attributed with strong inc...

Male Sprague-Dawley rats were fitted with two cannulae in the VTA and one cannula in the NTS for co-administration of the micro-opioid receptor agonist DAMGO in one site and the opioid antagonist naltrexone in the other. Injection of DAMGO into the VTA or the NTS stimulated feeding. The increase in food intake after DAMGO injection into the VTA was decreased following injection of naltrexone in...

Ventral tegmental area (VTA) neuron firing precedes behaviors elicited by reward-predictive sensory cues and scales with the magnitude and unpredictability of received rewards. These patterns are consistent with roles in the performance of learned appetitive behaviors and in positive reinforcement, respectively. The VTA includes subpopulations of neurons with different afferent connections, neu...

Dopaminergic (DAergic) neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) play crucial roles in motivational control of behaviors, and their activity is regulated directly or indirectly via GABAergic neurons by extrinsic afferents from various sources, including the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST). Here, the neurochemical composition of VTA-projecting BST neurons and their outputs to the VTA...

We have recently identified a homogeneous population of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-containing neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), an area implicated in the reinforcing properties of alcohol. We evaluated the effects of local and systemic ethanol on VTA GABA neuron spontaneous activity in ethanol naive and chronically treated freely behaving rats and in anesthetized rats. In freely ...

Recent studies have demonstrated that the central dopaminergic system is implicated in the mechanism underlying general anesthesia. Here, we investigated whether dopaminergic ventral tegmental area (VTA) neurons participate in general anesthesia. Dopaminergic VTA neurons were selectively ablated from male Sprague Dawley rats via the bilateral infusion of 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) into the VTA....

Previous work from our laboratory indicated that female Wistar rats will self-administer ethanol (EtOH) directly into the posterior ventral tegmental area (VTA). These results suggested that VTA dopamine (DA) neurons might be involved in mediating the reinforcing actions of EtOH within this region. The objectives of this study were to determine (1) the dose-response effects for the self-adminis...

Dopamine cells are densely located in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and project to several forebrain structures such as the Nucleus Accumbens (NAc) and the Central Amygdala (CeA) to influence various forms of motivated actions. Previous studies have suggested that dopaminergic projections from the VTA to NAc are involved in instantaneous forms of motivation, while VTA to CeA projections may ...

UNLABELLED Intermittent social defeat stress escalates later cocaine self-administration. Reward and stress both activate ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine neurons, increasing downstream extracellular dopamine concentration in the medial prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens. The stress neuropeptide corticotropin releasing factor (CRF) and its receptors (CRF-R1, CRF-R2) are located in the...