PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Lucas Sjulson
AU  - Adrien Peyrache
AU  - Andrea Cumpelik
AU  - Daniela Cassataro
AU  - György Buzsáki
TI  - Cocaine place conditioning strengthens location-specific hippocampal inputs to the nucleus accumbens
AID  - 10.1101/105890
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 105890
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/12/105890.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/12/105890.full
AB  - Conditioned place preference (CPP) is a widely used model of addiction-related behavior whose underlying mechanism is not understood. In this study, we used dual site silicon probe recordings in freely moving mice to examine interactions between the hippocampus and nucleus accumbens in cocaine CPP. We found that CPP was associated with recruitment of nucleus accumbens medium spiny neurons to fire in the cocaine-paired location, and this recruitment was driven predominantly by selective strengthening of hippocampal inputs arising from place cells that encode the cocaine-paired location. These findings provide in vivo evidence that the synaptic potentiation in the accumbens caused by repeated cocaine administration preferentially affects inputs that were active at the time of drug exposure. This provides a potential physiological mechanism by which drug use becomes associated with specific environmental contexts.