Nature Communications (Feb 2017)

Dysfunction of ventrolateral striatal dopamine receptor type 2-expressing medium spiny neurons impairs instrumental motivation

  • Iku Tsutsui-Kimura,
  • Hiroyuki Takiue,
  • Keitaro Yoshida,
  • Ming Xu,
  • Ryutaro Yano,
  • Hiroyuki Ohta,
  • Hiroshi Nishida,
  • Youcef Bouchekioua,
  • Hideyuki Okano,
  • Motokazu Uchigashima,
  • Masahiko Watanabe,
  • Norio Takata,
  • Michael R. Drew,
  • Hiromi Sano,
  • Masaru Mimura,
  • Kenji F. Tanaka

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14304
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 1
pp. 1 – 13

Abstract

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D2 receptor-expressing medium spiny neurons (D2-MSNs) are thought to suppress goal-directed behaviours. Here authors ablate D2-MSNs specifically in the ventrolateral striatum, and find that surprisingly, it leads to a reduction in goal-directed motivation in mice.