Nature Communications (Jan 2016)

Serotonin neurons in the dorsal raphe nucleus encode reward signals

  • Yi Li,
  • Weixin Zhong,
  • Daqing Wang,
  • Qiru Feng,
  • Zhixiang Liu,
  • Jingfeng Zhou,
  • Chunying Jia,
  • Fei Hu,
  • Jiawei Zeng,
  • Qingchun Guo,
  • Ling Fu,
  • Minmin Luo

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10503
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 1
pp. 1 – 15

Abstract

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How neurons in the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) respond to reward related behaviours is not known. Here, Li and colleagues report that DRN serotoninergic neurons are phasically activated by rewards such as sex, food and sucrose, and tonically activated during reward anticipation, while GABAergic neurons respond to punishment.