Circuit remodeling driven by pathological forms of synaptic plasticity underlies several
psychiatric diseases, including addiction. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been applied to treat …

The persistence of negative affect in pain leads to co-morbid symptoms such as anhedonia
and depression—major health issues in the United States. The neuronal circuitry and …

Few tools exist to visualize and manipulate neurons that are targets of neuromodulators. We
present iTango, a light- and ligand-gated gene expression system based on a light-…

Reward drives motivated behaviours and is essential for survival, and therefore there is strong
evolutionary pressure to retain contextual information about rewarding stimuli. This drive …

The mesolimbic reward system is primarily comprised of the ventral tegmental area (VTA)
and the nucleus accumbens (NAc) as well as their afferent and efferent connections. This …

The nucleus accumbens shell (NAcSh) and the ventral pallidum (VP) are critical for reward
processing, although the question of how coordinated activity within these nuclei orchestrates …

Addiction is a disorder of behavioral symptoms including enhanced incentive salience of
drug-associated cues, but also a negative affective state. Cocaine-evoked synaptic plasticity in …

Background The ability to appropriately integrate and respond to rewarding and aversive
stimuli is essential for survival. The ventral pallidum (VP) plays a critical role in processing both …

Feeding is critical for survival, and disruption in the mechanisms that govern food intake
underlies disorders such as obesity and anorexia nervosa. It is important to understand both …

Altered brain energy homeostasis is a key adaptation occurring in the cocaine-addicted brain,
but the effect of cocaine on the fundamental source of energy, mitochondria, is unknown. …