Nature Communications (Sep 2019)

NMDA receptor-dependent plasticity in the nucleus accumbens connects reward-predictive cues to approach responses

  • Mercedes Vega-Villar,
  • Jon C. Horvitz,
  • Saleem M. Nicola

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12387-z
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 16

Abstract

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Conditioned stimuli elicit phasic changes in nucleus accumbens (NAc) firing that invigorate approach responses to predicted rewards. Here the authors show that NAc neurons acquire cue-evoked responses during learning as a result of excitatory plasticity within the NAc.