Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior

The paper shows that cholinergic modulation of dopamine release enhances effortful behavior by amplifying dopamine responses to high-effort rewards.

The paper generates and characterizes knock-in mouse lines for precise genetic targeting of striatal and dopaminergic neurons, confirming their utility for studying neural circuits and disorders.

This study shows that dopamine signals in the striatum reflect long-term learning strategies in mice, with a deep neural network model capturing these dynamics through reinforcement learning.

This study investigates how environmental enrichment reduces food-seeking behavior by modulating specific cell types and circuits in the prelimbic cortex.

The paper identifies mitochondrial calcium influx via MCU as a bioenergetic mechanism that selectively enables drug reward and addictive behaviors while sparing natural reward.

This study shows that pair bonding in male mandarin voles increases DA release and alters activity in NAc shell D1 and D2 MSNs, with D2 MSN inhibition enhancing pair bond formation.

This study shows that environmental enrichment reduces food-seeking behavior by increasing excitatory and decreasing inhibitory activity in prelimbic cortex neurons.

This study shows that MCH neurons and dopamine systems in the nucleus accumbens interact bidirectionally during food-motivated learning and consumption.

This study identifies how different subtypes of VTA glutamatergic neurons signal reward and aversion in distinct ways, highlighting unique roles in behavioral salience.

This paper shows that dopamine neurons in mice use multiple time scales to encode reward prediction errors, suggesting cell-specific temporal discounting and implications for reinforcement learning algorithms.

This study investigates how acetylcholine dynamics in the striatum change during learning and extinction of Pavlovian associations, identifying region-specific patterns and their role in behavioral flexibility.

The paper investigates cocaine-induced astrocyte-specific transcriptome in mice, identifies CREB as a key regulator, and shows its role in modulating neuronal and behavioral responses to cocaine.

This study compares the effects of antidepressants on conditioned and innate motivation in mice, finding divergent impacts on reward-seeking behaviors.

This study uses chemogenetics to show that activation of the VTA-AcbSh circuit induces sex-dependent changes in reward-seeking behavior in rodents.

This study investigates sex-specific adaptations in VTA circuits under subchronic stress, finding reduced firing in female VTA dopaminergic neurons and increased inhibitory tone in both sexes.

The paper identifies genetic loci associated with saline self-administration in mice, finding distinct genetic bases compared to cocaine self-administration.

This study shows that ethanol inhibits acetylcholine release in the dorsomedial striatum, potentially contributing to AUD-related behaviors.

This study examines how methamphetamine exposure during adolescence affects COMT expression in the rat prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens, showing sex-dependent changes in the PFC but not the NAc.

This study shows that KOR antagonism restores phosphorylation, trafficking, and behavior in a mouse model with a disease-associated DAT variant.

The paper investigates how dopamine transmission and mating drive change over days in male mice, finding two mechanisms that regulate these slow-timescale dynamics.

The paper investigates dopamine signaling in mice during reward and aversive tasks, finding distinct spatial patterns and encoding mechanisms for reward and aversive signals.

The paper shows that Avoider rats, after stress, show reduced sensitivity to alcohol's aversive effects, linked to changes in cFos expression in brain regions like the lateral habenula and hypothalamus.

This study shows that prolonged junk food exposure in rats reduces VTA neural activity and responsiveness to natural rewards like food and sex.

This study shows that AMPA receptor activation in the prelimbic cortex is necessary for incubated cocaine-craving, but not for sucrose-craving.

This study shows that phosphorylation of dopamine transporter at threonine-53 (pT53-DAT) mediates KOR agonist-induced locomotor suppression and aversion by enhancing DAT activity and surface expression.

This study shows that female mice, but not males, experience reduced corticostriatal theta coherence after repeated binge alcohol drinking.

This study investigates how prepubertal gonadectomy affects dopamine release in the nigrostriatal and mesoaccumbal systems of wild-derived mice, finding reduced release in the nigrostriatal system but not the mesoaccumbal.

This study identifies a movement-based dopamine signal in mice that acts as a value-free teaching signal for learning sound-action associations, working alongside reward prediction error.

This study uses in vivo calcium imaging to analyze M2 neuronal activity during cocaine self-administration, finding increased neuronal engagement and adaptation in cocaine-exposed mice.

The paper uses RNA sequencing in mice to identify transcriptome differences associated with ethanol preference, finding reduced gene-gene correlation in high-preferring mice.