The DOI matches its Crossref record; 53 of the 53 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Convergent Processing of Both Positive and Negative Motivational Signals by the VTA Dopamine Neuronal Populations
Open accessAbstract
Dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) have been traditionally studied for their roles in reward-related motivation or drug addiction. Here we study how the VTA dopamine neuron population may process fearful and negative experiences as well as reward information in freely behaving mice. Using multi-tetrode recording, we find that up to 89% of the putative dopamine neurons in the VTA exhibit significant activation in response to the conditioned tone that predict food reward, while the same dopamine neuron population also respond to the fearful experiences such as free fall and shake events. The majority of these VTA putative dopamine neurons exhibit suppression and offset-rebound excitation, whereas ∼25% of the recorded putative dopamine neurons show excitation by the fearful events. Importantly, VTA putative dopamine neurons exhibit parametric encoding properties: their firing change durations are proportional to the fearful event durations. In addition, we demonstrate that the contextual information is crucial for these neurons to respectively elicit positive or negative motivational responses by the same conditioned tone. Taken together, our findings suggest that VTA dopamine neurons may employ the convergent encoding strategy for processing both positive and negative experiences, intimately integrating with cues and environmental context.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Recent experiments also show that acute stressors are encoded by DA-releasing neurons in the VTA, cause DA sensitization in the NAC, and facilitate drug taking; demonstrating that mesolimbic DA release also encodes negative motivational states and stress responses (Miczek et al 2011; Wang and Tsien 2011).”
From The behavioral, anatomical and pharmacological parallels between social attachment, love and addiction (2012) · cites this paper as Wang and Tsien 2011
In the citing paper
“Some of the stress-related effects of CRF in the NAC shell may be DA-dependent; recall that DA is also modulated by acute and chronic stressors (Miczek et al 2011; Wang and Tsien 2011; Chen et al 2012b).”
From The behavioral, anatomical and pharmacological parallels between social attachment, love and addiction (2012) · cites this paper as Wang and Tsien 2011
In the citing paper
“Thus, although 89% of VTA dopaminergic neurons respond with activation to a conditioned reward, they also respond to fearful events, with the majority of the neurons showing suppression. Interestingly, 25% respond with excitation to both positive and fearful events [101].”
From A neoHebbian framework for episodic memory; role of dopamine-dependent late LTP (2011) · cites this paper as [101]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
The Mouse Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates
Paxinos, G. (2001) · Cited by 12,859
Di Chiara, G., & Imperato, A. (1988) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.85.14.5274 · Cited by 4,733
What is the role of dopamine in reward: hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive salience?
Berridge, K. C., & Robinson, T. E. (1998) · Brain Research Reviews · doi:10.1016/s0165-0173(98)00019-8 · Cited by 4,127
Neural systems of reinforcement for drug addiction: from actions to habits to compulsion
Everitt, B. J., & Robbins, T. W. (2005) · Nature Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nn1579 · Cited by 3,785
Dopamine, learning and motivation.
Wise, R. A. (2004) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn1406 · Cited by 3,379
NEURAL MECHANISMS OF ADDICTION: The Role of Reward-Related Learning and Memory
Hyman, S. E., Malenka, R. C., & Nestler, E. J. (2006) · Annual Review of Neuroscience · doi:10.1146/annurev.neuro.29.051605.113009 · Cited by 2,647
The debate over dopamine’s role in reward: the case for incentive salience
Berridge, K. C. (2007) · Psychopharmacology · doi:10.1007/s00213-006-0578-x · Cited by 2,347
The hippocampal-VTA loop: controlling the entry of information into long-term memory
Lisman, J. E., & Grace, A. A. (2005) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2005.05.002 · Cited by 1,983
An opponent-process theory of motivation. I. Temporal dynamics of affect
Solomon, R. L., & Corbit, J. D. (1974) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/h0036128 · Cited by 1,704
Ikemoto, S., & Panksepp, J. (1999) · Brain Research Reviews · doi:10.1016/s0165-0173(99)00023-5 · Cited by 1,450
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Items 101–117 of 117
The Role of the Ventral Tegmental Area in the Extinction of Probabilistic Rewards
Song, M. R. (2011) · UA Campus Repository (The University of Arizona)
Tonic GABAergic inhibition as a new way to regulate mesolimbic dopamine system
Vashchinkina, E. (2013) · Työväentutkimus Vuosikirja
Post traumatic stress disorder: Insights from cat hair and catfish
Nalloor, R. (2012)
McCoy, A. W. (2015) · K-State Research Exchange (Kansas State University)
Investigating reward systems in the human midbrain with fMRI
Limbrick‐Oldfield, E. H. (2012) · Spiral (Imperial College London) · doi:10.25560/14511
Vrijen, C., Hartman, C. A., de Jonge, P., & Oldehinkel, A. J. (2020) · Neuropraxis · doi:10.1007/s12474-019-00245-z
Midbrain dopamine neurons encode internal effort signalPreprint
Wang, D. V. (2020) · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · doi:10.1101/2020.03.04.976969
Self-citationDopamine and Opioid regulation of amygdala function
Patel, S. (2020) · The Sydney eScholarship Repository (The University of Sydney)
An Investigation of Dopamine’s Role in Six Psychiatric Illnesses
Wang, A. (2021) · Journal of Student Research · doi:10.47611/jsrhs.v10i1.1394 · Cited by 1
Almela, P., Zaragoza, J. N., García-Carmona, J. A., Mora, L., Hidalgo, J. M., Milanés, M. V., & Laorden, M.-L. (2013) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/annotation/3708ead6-a61a-48b4-aca4-c45b3b7dd292
Schoenbaum, G. M. (2019) · Faculty Opinions – Post-Publication Peer Review of the Biomedical Literature · doi:10.3410/f.721782254.793560158
Karaman, G. D., & Selçuk, S. A. (2025) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-031-73947-7_14
Huang, W., Hall, A. F., Kawalec, N., Opalka, A. N., LIU, J. T., & Wang, D. V. (2026) · eLife · doi:10.7554/elife.105774.2
Self-citationWaldron, V. J., Suttawireesan, M., Fatimah, S., Merchenthaler, I. J., & Brown, P. L. (2026) · Journal of Neuroendocrinology · doi:10.1111/jne.70183
A pontomesencephalic-mesolimbic circuit modulates activity-based anorexia
Peng, B., Gao, X., Chen, Y., Xin, Y., Zhang, Y., Yu, K., Lu, M., Li, W., Yang, D., Bao, C., et al. (2026) · Science Advances · doi:10.1126/sciadv.aee1476 · Cited by 1
Metadata
- Authors
- Wang, D. V., & Tsien, J. Z.
- Affiliations
- East China Normal University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Tsien, Joe Z.
- ORCID
- Wang, Dong V.
- Venue
- PLoS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2011-02-15
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- e17047
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3039659
- OpenAlex
- W2083000736
- Cited by
- 116
- References
- 53
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 13 · 2012: 17
- FWCI
- 7.15
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Georgia Research Alliance
- National Institute on Aging (AG025918, R01AG034663, AG024022, R01AG025918, AG034663, R01AG024022)
- National Institute of Mental Health (MH060236, R01MH060236)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Keywords
- ventral tegmental area, dopaminergic neurons, fear, reward, contextual modulation, free fall, mice
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Fear, Male, Mice, Inbred C57BL, Motivation, Time Factors, Ventral Tegmental Area, Mice, Dopaminergic Neurons
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
