A dopaminergic switch for fear to safety transitions

Overcoming aversive emotional memories requires neural systems that detect when fear responses are no longer appropriate. The midbrain ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine system has been implicated in reward and more broadly in signalling when a better than expected outcome has occurred. This suggests that it may be important in guiding fear to safety transitions. We report that when an expected aversive outcome does not occur, activity in midbrain dopamine neurons is necessary to extinguish behavioral fear responses and engage molecular signalling events in extinction learning circuits. Furthermore, a specific dopamine projection to the nucleus accumbens medial shell is partially responsible for this effect. By contrast, a separate dopamine projection to the medial prefrontal cortex opposes extinction learning. This demonstrates a novel function for the canonical VTA-dopamine reward system and reveals opposing behavioural roles for different dopamine neuron projections in fear extinction learning

Reduction of Pavlovian bias in schizophrenia: Enhanced effects in clozapine-administered patients

The negative symptoms of schizophrenia (SZ) are associated with a pattern of reinforcement learning (RL) deficits likely related to degraded representations of reward values. However, the RL tasks used to date have required active responses to both reward and punishing stimuli. Pavlovian biases have been shown to affect performance on these tasks through invigoration of action to reward and inhibition of action to punishment, and may be partially responsible for the effects found in patients. Forty-five patients with schizophrenia and 30 demographically-matched controls completed a four-stimulus reinforcement learning task that crossed action ("Go" or "NoGo") and the valence of the optimal outcome (reward or punishment-avoidance), such that all combinations of action and outcome valence were tested. Behaviour was modelled using a six-parameter RL model and EEG was simultaneously recorded. Patients demonstrated a reduction in Pavlovian performance bias that was evident in a reduced Go bias across the full group. In a subset of patients administered clozapine, the reduction in Pavlovian bias was enhanced. The reduction in Pavlovian bias in SZ patients was accompanied by feedback processing differences at the time of the P3a component. The reduced Pavlovian bias in patients is suggested to be due to reduced fidelity in the communication between striatal regions and frontal cortex. It may also partially account for previous findings of poorer "Go-learning" in schizophrenia where "Go" responses or Pavlovian consistent responses are required for optimal performance. An attenuated P3a component dynamic in patients is consistent with a view that deficits in operant learning are due to impairments in adaptively using feedback to update representations of stimulus value

Quantifying Individual Variation in the Propensity to Attribute Incentive Salience to Reward Cues

If reward-associated cues acquire the properties of incentive stimuli they can come to powerfully control behavior, and potentially promote maladaptive behavior. Pavlovian incentive stimuli are defined as stimuli that have three fundamental properties: they are attractive, they are themselves desired, and they can spur instrumental actions. We have found, however, that there is considerable individual variation in the extent to which animals attribute Pavlovian incentive motivational properties (“incentive salience”) to reward cues. The purpose of this paper was to develop criteria for identifying and classifying individuals based on their propensity to attribute incentive salience to reward cues. To do this, we conducted a meta-analysis of a large sample of rats (N = 1,878) subjected to a classic Pavlovian conditioning procedure. We then used the propensity of animals to approach a cue predictive of reward (one index of the extent to which the cue was attributed with incentive salience), to characterize two behavioral phenotypes in this population: animals that approached the cue (“sign-trackers”) vs. others that approached the location of reward delivery (“goal-trackers”). This variation in Pavlovian approach behavior predicted other behavioral indices of the propensity to attribute incentive salience to reward cues. Thus, the procedures reported here should be useful for making comparisons across studies and for assessing individual variation in incentive salience attribution in small samples of the population, or even for classifying single animals

Phasic mesolimbic dopamine signaling encodes the facilitation of incentive motivation produced by repeated cocaine exposure

Drug addiction is marked by pathological drug seeking and intense drug craving, particularly in response to drug-related stimuli. Repeated psychostimulant administration is known to induce long-term alterations in mesolimbic dopamine (DA) signaling that are hypothesized to mediate this heightened sensitivity to environmental stimuli. However, there is little direct evidence that drug-induced alteration in mesolimbic DA function underlies this hypersensitivity to motivational cues. In the current study, we tested this hypothesis using fast-scan cyclic voltammetry to monitor phasic DA signaling in the nucleus accumbens core of cocaine-pretreated (6 once-daily injections of 15 mg/kg, i.p.) and drug-naive rats during a test of cue-evoked incentive motivation for food - the Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer task. We found that prior cocaine exposure augmented both reward seeking and DA release triggered by the presentation of a reward-paired cue. Furthermore, cue-evoked DA signaling positively correlated with cue-evoked food seeking and was found to be a statistical mediator of this behavioral effect of cocaine. Taken together, these findings provide support for the hypothesis that repeated cocaine exposure enhances cue-evoked incentive motivation through augmented phasic mesolimbic DA signaling. This work sheds new light on a fundamental neurobiological mechanism underlying motivated behavior and its role in the expression of compulsive reward seeking. © 2014 American College of Neuropsychopharmacology

Phasic mesolimbic dopamine signaling encodes the facilitation of incentive motivation produced by repeated cocaine exposure

Drug addiction is marked by pathological drug seeking and intense drug craving, particularly in response to drug-related stimuli. Repeated psychostimulant administration is known to induce long-term alterations in mesolimbic dopamine (DA) signaling that are hypothesized to mediate this heightened sensitivity to environmental stimuli. However, there is little direct evidence that drug-induced alteration in mesolimbic DA function underlies this hypersensitivity to motivational cues. In the current study, we tested this hypothesis using fast-scan cyclic voltammetry to monitor phasic DA signaling in the nucleus accumbens core of cocaine-pretreated (6 once-daily injections of 15 mg/kg, i.p.) and drug-naive rats during a test of cue-evoked incentive motivation for food - the Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer task. We found that prior cocaine exposure augmented both reward seeking and DA release triggered by the presentation of a reward-paired cue. Furthermore, cue-evoked DA signaling positively correlated with cue-evoked food seeking and was found to be a statistical mediator of this behavioral effect of cocaine. Taken together, these findings provide support for the hypothesis that repeated cocaine exposure enhances cue-evoked incentive motivation through augmented phasic mesolimbic DA signaling. This work sheds new light on a fundamental neurobiological mechanism underlying motivated behavior and its role in the expression of compulsive reward seeking. © 2014 American College of Neuropsychopharmacology

Basolateral amygdala rapid glutamate release encodes an outcome-specific representation vital for reward-predictive cues to selectively invigorate reward-seeking actions

Environmental stimuli have the ability to generate specific representations of the rewards they predict and in so doing alter the selection and performance of reward-seeking actions. The basolateral amygdala participates in this process, but precisely how is unknown. To rectify this, we monitored, in near-real time, basolateral amygdala glutamate concentration changes during a test of the ability of reward-predictive cues to influence reward-seeking actions (Pavlovian-instrumental transfer). Glutamate concentration was found to be transiently elevated around instrumental reward seeking. During the Pavlovian-instrumental transfer test these glutamate transients were time-locked to and correlated with only those actions invigorated by outcome-specific motivational information provided by the reward-predictive stimulus (i.e., actions earning the same specific outcome as predicted by the presented CS). In addition, basolateral amygdala AMPA, but not NMDA glutamate receptor inactivation abolished the selective excitatory influence of reward-predictive cues over reward seeking. These data the hypothesis that transient glutamate release in the BLA can encode the outcome-specific motivational information provided by reward-predictive stimuli

Phasic Mesolimbic Dopamine Signaling Encodes the Facilitation of Incentive Motivation Produced by Repeated Cocaine Exposure

Drug addiction is marked by pathological drug seeking and intense drug craving, particularly in response to drug-related stimuli. Repeated psychostimulant administration is known to induce long-term alterations in mesolimbic dopamine (DA) signaling that are hypothesized to mediate this heightened sensitivity to environmental stimuli. However, there is little direct evidence that drug-induced alteration in mesolimbic DA function underlies this hypersensitivity to motivational cues. In the current study, we tested this hypothesis using fast-scan cyclic voltammetry to monitor phasic DA signaling in the nucleus accumbens core of cocaine-pretreated (6 once-daily injections of 15 mg/kg, i.p.) and drug-naive rats during a test of cue-evoked incentive motivation for food—the Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer task. We found that prior cocaine exposure augmented both reward seeking and DA release triggered by the presentation of a reward-paired cue. Furthermore, cue-evoked DA signaling positively correlated with cue-evoked food seeking and was found to be a statistical mediator of this behavioral effect of cocaine. Taken together, these findings provide support for the hypothesis that repeated cocaine exposure enhances cue-evoked incentive motivation through augmented phasic mesolimbic DA signaling. This work sheds new light on a fundamental neurobiological mechanism underlying motivated behavior and its role in the expression of compulsive reward seeking