In the ventral striatum, motivated behaviour is understood to be encoded through a direct pathway, in which medium spiny neurons (MSNs) project from the nucleus accumbens (NAc) to the ventral mesencephalon (VM), and an indirect pathway, in which NAc MSNs project to ventral pallidum (VP) neurons, which target the VM. The direct and indirect pathway MSNs are thought to express dopamine D1 and D2 receptors, respectively. However, using an optogentic approach, Kupchik et al. show that activation of D1- or D2-MSNs in the NAc core can elicit inhibitory currents in the VP, opposing the idea that the indirect pathway is simply coded by D2 receptors.
References
Kupchik, Y. M. et al. Coding the direct/indirect pathways by D1 and D2 receptors is not valid for accumbens projections. Nat. Neurosci. http:/dx.doi.org/10.1038/nn.4068 (2015)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yates, D. Recoding the pathways. Nat Rev Neurosci 16, 510 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn4018
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn4018
