Dopaminergic Circuits in Reward and Aversion

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The mesocorticolimbic dopamine (DA) system, which is composed of DA neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) projecting to nucleus accumbens and medial prefrontal cortex, has been intensively studied because of its importance in reward processing, drug addiction and other neuropsychiatric diseases. Importantly, while VTA DA neurons were thought to form a homogeneous cell population, recent research has demonstrated a much greater diversity of VTA DA cell type and function. Accordingly, VTA DA neurons encode much more than reward and also contribute to negative affect such as aversion and social defeat stress. How VTA DA neurons could mediate both reward and aversion is currently unknown and an important goal of my research. In my presentation, I will discuss work from the lab that has elucidated the circuit architecture and function of the reciprocal connectivity in the mesolimbic DA system (Yang et al., 2018; Neuron). Moreover, I will discuss recent data that demonstrate the identification of a subcircuit within the mesolimbic DA system that contributes to the encoding of conditioned and unconditioned aversive stimuli (de Jong et al., Neuron, in press). Collectively, our work suggest that we need to develop a new perspective on the DA circuitry that will guide future treatment strategies for addiction and other neuropsychiatric disorders where dysfunction of the neural systems underlying motivated behaviors have been strongly implicated.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.