Habits are controlled by antecedent stimuli rather than by goal expectancy. Interval schedules of feedback have been shown to generate habits, as revealed by the insensitivity of behaviour acquired under this schedule to outcome devaluation treatments. Two experiments were conducted to assess the role of the dorsolateral striatum in habit learning. In Experiment 1, sham operated controls and ra...

Growing evidence supports a critical role for the dorsal striatum in cognitive as well as motor control. Both lesions and in vivo recordings demonstrate a transition in the engaged dorsal striatal subregion, from dorsomedial to dorsolateral, as skill performance shifts from an attentive phase to a more automatic or habitual phase. What are the neural mechanisms supporting the cognitive and beha...

Extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) plays a role in neuronal changes induced by repeated drug exposure. Given that electroacupuncture reverses locomotor sensitization induced by ethanol, we investigated whether this effect is parallel to ERK signalling. Mice received daily ethanol (2 g/kg i.p), for 21 d. Electroacupuncture was performed daily, during four (subsequent) days of ethanol wi...

Previous studies have established that neurons in the dorsomedial striatum track the behavioral significance of external stimuli, are sensitive to contingencies between actions and outcomes, and show rapid flexibility in representing task-related information. Here, we describe how neural activity in the dorsomedial striatum changes during the initial acquisition of a Go/NoGo task and during an ...

Recent evidence suggests that a circuit involving the centromedian-parafascicular (Pf) thalamus and basal ganglia is critical for a shift away from biased actions. In particular, excitatory input from the Pf onto striatal cholinergic neurons may facilitate behavioral flexibility. Accumulating evidence indicates that an endogenous increase in dorsomedial striatal acetylcholine (ACh) output enhan...

The onset of spontaneous seizures in temporal lobe epilepsy is associated with an altered hippocampal circuitry. Neurochemical investigations have demonstrated that changes also occur in corticostriatal synaptic pathways. Since the striatum plays a major role in procedural learning, it is of particular interest whether dyskinetic motor dysfunction sometimes associated with epilepsy is indeed du...

The ability to regulate appetite is essential avoid food over-consumption. desire for a particular can be triggered by its odor before it even seen. Using fMRI, we identify the neural systems modulated cognitive regulation when experiencing appetizing stimuli presented in both olfactory and visual modalities, while being hungry. Regulatory instruction bids items inhalation patterns. Distinct br...