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Motivation is the driving force that elicits a certain behaviour from an organism in order to satisfy the drive or seek a particular goal. Motivation can be induced by physiological drives such as hunger, thirst or pain, as well as by events in the external environment.
Ventral pallidum GABA and glutamate neuron activation drives approach and avoidance, respectively. Here, the authors show that both ventral pallidum cell types are activated during approach to reward and by aversive stimuli, but elicit opponent effects on VTA cell-type activity.
The neuronal mechanism of how the prefrontal cortex exerts top-down influence on the cingulo-striatal network during decision-making in depressive states is not fully understood. Here authors showed that negative bias in decision-making can be artificially induced via stimulating such neural network and they observed diminished top-down influences correlating with the depressive state.
The dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) is a major source of serotonergic projections to brain-wide targets. Here the authors use optogenetics and fMRI to investigate brain-wide responses to activation of the DRN serotonergic pathway.
Physiologically relevant stimulation of dopamine neurons does not function as a reward and does not endow cues with a reward representation. However, high-frequency stimulation is represented as a sensory-specific goal that motivates behavior.
Across learning, the brain network transitioned from an integrated state into a segregated state as reflected by an increased modularity value. Replicated across two studies, the speed of the brain state transition was associated with the individual behavioral learning rate.
A study in mice helps to resolve a debate surrounding striatal DA dynamics and reward benefit or cost and also reveals motivation and transient striatal DA release have a bidirectional causal relationship.
Sensory association learning is impaired in people with insulin resistance but can be restored following a one-time intervention with liraglutide. These findings provide ample evidence for metabolic signals as modulators of adaptive behaviour and suggest a potential role for GLP-1 receptor agonists in obesity management.