Abstract
The lateral hypothalamus (LH) plays an important role in many motivated behaviors, sleep-wake states, food intake, drug-seeking, energy balance, etc. It is also home to a heterogeneous population of neurons that express and co-express multiple neuropeptides including hypocretin (Hcrt), melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH), cocaine- and amphetamine-regulated transcript (CART) and neurotensin (NT). These neurons project widely throughout the brain to areas such as the locus coeruleus, the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, the amygdala and the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Lateral hypothalamic projections to the VTA are believed to be important for driving behavior due to the involvement of dopaminergic reward circuitry. The purpose of this article is to review current knowledge regarding the lateral hypothalamic connections to the VTA and the role they play in driving these behaviors.
Highlights
The field of behavioral neuroscience has taken a keen interest in understanding the neural circuits driving motivated behaviors
The lateral hypothalamus (LH) projects densely to the ventral tegmental area (VTA), which is known to play a role in food-reward, but reward in general and that these functions in the VTA rely on its population of dopaminergic neurons (Gallistel et al, 1985; Phillips et al, 2003; Grace et al, 2007) suggesting that these two structures are important for driving goal-oriented
This modulation of reward response in the VTA may play an important role in directing motivated behaviors to rewards that are less predictable over rewards that are more regularly available. This suggests a mechanism by which VTADA neurons can rationalize between multiple rewards within an environment by modulating the reward value of more reliable rewards to be less rewarding than unpredictable rewards to shift the animals drive to focus on less readily-available rewards. This series of experiments shows the multitude of benefits that can be gained by using a multi-method approach to investigate neural circuits, by using behavioral protocols, optogenetics, electrophysiology and computational modeling these researchers were able to gain a deeper understanding of VTADA activity by observing it from multiple angles
Summary
The field of behavioral neuroscience has taken a keen interest in understanding the neural circuits driving motivated behaviors. This suggests a mechanism by which VTADA neurons can rationalize between multiple rewards within an environment by modulating the reward value of more reliable rewards to be less rewarding than unpredictable rewards to shift the animals drive to focus on less readily-available rewards This series of experiments shows the multitude of benefits that can be gained by using a multi-method approach to investigate neural circuits, by using behavioral protocols, optogenetics, electrophysiology and computational modeling (as well as investigating the role of both DA and GABA activity for comparison) these researchers were able to gain a deeper understanding of VTADA activity by observing it from multiple angles. The development of this gene-targeting methodology opens up the possibility to investigate the multiple other neuron types in the LH that are known to project to the VTA to better understand how these neuron types differentiate between multiple input signals and determine which environmental goals to pursue
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