Motivation articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Animals resolve uncertainty by seeking knowledge about the future. How the brain controls this is unclear. The authors show that a network including primate anterior cingulate cortex and basal ganglia encodes opportunities to gain information about uncertain rewards and mediates information seeking.

    • J. Kael White
    • , Ethan S. Bromberg-Martin
    •  & Ilya E. Monosov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The laterodorsal tegmental nucleus (LDT) is known to influence reward processing through its projections to the VTA. Here, the authors report that the cholinergic projections from the LDT to the nucleus accumbens play an important role in motivation and positive reinforcement behaviors.

    • Bárbara Coimbra
    • , Carina Soares-Cunha
    •  & Ana João Rodrigues

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many natural behaviours involve tracking of a target in space. Here, the authors describe a task to assess this behaviour in mice and use in vivo electrophysiology, calcium imaging, optogenetics, and chemogenetics to investigate the role of the striatum in target pursuit.

    • Namsoo Kim
    • , Haofang E. Li
    •  & Henry H. Yin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Astrocytes can dynamically control glutamate availability at specific active synapses through the glutamate transporter, GLT-1. Here, the authors show that astrocytes in the VTA selectively facilitate excitation of VTA GABAergic neurons to inhibit dopamine neurons and drive avoidance behavior via GLT-1.

    • J. A. Gomez
    • , J. M. Perkins
    •  & C. A. Paladini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In the ventral basal ganglia circuit, the ventral pallidum (VP) receives major inputs from the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and is involved in reward processing. Here, the authors report that, contrary to the accepted model, signals related to the relative value of reward in VP emerge before NAc and are more robust.

    • David Ottenheimer
    • , Jocelyn M. Richard
    •  & Patricia H. Janak

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Neuroeconomic theories suggest that conflict during decision, such as exhibited by relapsing drug addicts who continue drug use despite stated wishes not to, might arise from separable processes in decision making. Here the authors test mice in a foraging task designed to separate these processes and find that mice show alterations in separable components of decision conflict following abstinence from cocaine versus morphine.

    • Brian M. Sweis
    • , A. David Redish
    •  & Mark J. Thomas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fear memories are overcome only when it is ascertained that fearful responses are not appropriate. Here the authors demonstrate that activity in dopamine neurons is necessary to extinguish fear responses and two distinct dopamine neuron projections exert opposing effects on extinction learning.

    • Ray Luo
    • , Akira Uematsu
    •  & Joshua P. Johansen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Trial and error learning requires the brain to generate expectations and match them to outcomes, yet whether this occurs for semantic learning is unclear. Here, authors show that the brain encodes the degree to which new factual information violates expectations, which in turn determines whether information is encoded in long-term memory.

    • Alex Pine
    • , Noa Sadeh
    •  & Avi Mendelsohn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fluctuations in mood are known to affect our decisions. Here the authors propose and validate a model of how mood fluctuations arise through a slow integration of positive and negative feedback and report the resulting key changes in brain activity that modulate our decision making.

    • Fabien Vinckier
    • , Lionel Rigoux
    •  & Mathias Pessiglione

  • Article
    | Open Access

    μ-opioid signalling has a known role in the response to various rewarding stimuli, including pleasant foods. Here, Nummenmaa et al. show using PET and fMRI that individual differences in brain μ-opioid receptor density predict the strength of the neural response to highly palatable foods in humans

    • Lauri Nummenmaa
    • , Tiina Saanijoki
    •  & Kari Kalliokoski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dopamine D2 receptor activity in the nucleus accumbens is associated with regulation of motivated responding. Here the authors show that overexpression of D2 receptors specifically in ventral striatal projection neurons leads to an increase in the willingness to work by reducing inhibitory transmission to ventral pallidal neurons.

    • Eduardo F. Gallo
    • , Jozsef Meszaros
    •  & Christoph Kellendonk

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Though it's important to influence others' decisions, the neural correlates of persuasive strategies are not known. Here, authors show that people change their advice based on its accuracy and whether they are being listened to, and identify the distinct brain regions underpinning each strategy.

    • Uri Hertz
    • , Stefano Palminteri
    •  & Bahador Bahrami

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Adults adjust their cognitive performance according to the value of the outcome, but it is unclear whether adolescents do too. Here, authors show that adolescents do not adjust their cognitive effort according to value, and that this ability is mediated by connectivity between the striatum and prefrontal cortex.

    • Catherine Insel
    • , Erik K. Kastman
    •  & Leah H. Somerville

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In addition to circadian and homoeostatic drives, motivational levels influence sleep−wake cycles. Here the authors demonstrate that adenosine receptor-expressing neurons in the nucleus accumbens core that project to the ventral pallidum are inhibited by motivational stimuli and are causally involved in the control of slow-wave sleep.

    • Yo Oishi
    • , Qi Xu
    •  & Michael Lazarus

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Features of major depressive disorder including lack of motivation, sleep disruption and cognitive deficit have been modelled in rodents. Here, the authors develop a new method to elicit a depression-like state inDrosophila, and uncover separable roles for different serotonin receptors in depression-like behaviour.

    • Ariane-Saskia Ries
    • , Tim Hermanns
    •  & Roland Strauss

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ventral tegmental area (VTA) is involved in reward behaviours, but the precise contribution of VTA glutamatergic neurons to this process is not known. Here the authors show that phasic but not sustained optogenetic stimulation of VTA glutamatergic neurons is rewarding and involves co-release of GABA.

    • Ji Hoon Yoo
    • , Vivien Zell
    •  & Thomas S. Hnasko

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tolerance for risk decreases with age, but it is not known whether this shift can be accounted for by a neurobiological marker. Here, authors show that the age-related decrease in risk tolerance is better accounted for by grey matter decreases in right posterior parietal cortex than by age per se.

    • Michael A. Grubb
    • , Agnieszka Tymula
    •  & Ifat Levy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reward seeking behaviors involve dopamine (DA) release but the circuits underlying avoidance behavior remain comparatively understudied. Here the authors show that phasic increases in DA release in rats are higher for reward and avoidance cues compared with neutral cues and are positively correlated with poor avoidance.

    • Ronny N. Gentry
    • , Brian Lee
    •  & Matthew R. Roesch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Economic decisions are based on perceived reward value but it is unclear how individual neurons encode value estimates as input for decision mechanisms. Here authors show that dorsolateral prefrontal cortex uses a dynamic value code based on object-specific valuations by single neurons.

    • Ken-Ichiro Tsutsui
    • , Fabian Grabenhorst
    •  & Wolfram Schultz

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