Recent evidence suggests that rewarding and aversive stimuli affect the same brain areas, including medial prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens. Although nucleus accumbens is known to respond to salient stimuli, regardless of their hedonic valence, with selective increased dopamine release, little is known about the role of prefrontal cortex in reward- and aversion-related motivation or abou...

The role of dopamine in the rewarding aspects of sexual behaviour in female rats was investigated. This is a unique model because sexual behaviour is only rewarding when copulatory stimuli are experienced at the preferred rate of copulation for a female rat. In addition, increases in dopamine in the nucleus accumbens occur during sexual behaviour only when the female achieves this preferred rat...

Several large imaging-genetics consortia aim to identify genetic variants influencing subcortical brain volumes. We investigated the extent to which genetic variation accounts for the variation in subcortical volumes, including thalamus, amygdala, putamen, caudate nucleus, globus pallidus and nucleus accumbens and obtained the stability of these brain volumes over a five-year period. The herita...

The nucleus accumbens is a major input structure of the basal ganglia and integrates information from cortical and limbic structures to mediate goal-directed behaviors. Chronic exposure to several classes of drugs of abuse disrupts plasticity in this region, allowing drug-associated cues to engender a pathologic motivation for drug seeking. A number of alterations in glutamatergic transmission ...

orexin, mainly produced by orexin-expressing neurons in the lateral hypothalamus (lh), plays an important role in pain modulation. moreover, it is shown that the nucleus accumbens (nac) is one of the important areas involved in this modulation. orexin-1 (ox1) and orexin-2 (ox2) receptors are densely distributed in the nac. the study investigated the involvement of ox1 receptors in the nac on an...

The present study compares the extrapyramidal and neurochemical effects of clozapine and risperidone in rat caudate (corpus striatum) and nucleus accumbens (ventral striatum) dose-dependently. Animals injected with clozapine (2.5, 5.0 and 10.0 mg/kg IP) or risperidone (1.0, 2.5 and 5.0 mg/kg IP) in acute were sacrificed 1 h later to collect brain samples. Extrapyramidal side effects (EPS) in te...

conclusions ma is nowadays the most accurate stereotactic anatomic guide for targeting the human na. it is a representative example of how stereotactic microanatomy could serve the development of stereotactic microneurosurgery. following the currently used trajectory through the alic, a dbs electrode placement within the na, targeting the ma, is feasible, allowing either na or alic stimulation....

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...

introduction: it has been shown that administration of win55,212-2, a cannabinoid receptor agonist, into the basolateral amygdala (bla), dose-dependently increases the thermal latency to withdrawal in the tail-.ick test and decreases pain related behaviors in both phases of the formalin test. recent human and animal imaging data suggest that the nucleus accumbens (nac) is an important neural su...

INTRODUCTION The brain glutamate neurotransmitter system and its NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) receptors in the nucleus accumbens play an important role in the incidence of sensitivity and addiction. The present study examined the inhibitory effect of glutamate NMDA receptors in the nucleus accumbens in response to chronic stress. METHODS After the unilateral and bilateral placement of cannula(...