The paraventricular thalamus is a critical mediator of top-down control of cue-motivated behavior in rats
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Abstract
Cues in the environment can elicit complex emotional states, and thereby maladaptive behavior, as a function of their ascribed value. Here we capture individual variation in the propensity to attribute motivational value to reward-cues using the sign-tracker/goal-tracker animal model. Goal-trackers attribute predictive value to reward-cues, and sign-trackers attribute both predictive and incentive value. Using chemogenetics and microdialysis, we show that, in sign-trackers, stimulation of the neuronal pathway from the prelimbic cortex (PrL) to the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT) decreases the incentive value of a reward-cue. In contrast, in goal-trackers, inhibition of the PrL-PVT pathway increases both the incentive value and dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens shell. The PrL-PVT pathway, therefore, exerts top-down control over the dopamine-dependent process of incentive salience attribution. These results highlight PrL-PVT pathway as a potential target for treating psychopathologies associated with the attribution of excessive incentive value to reward-cues, including addiction.
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The study sheds light on a previously unrecognized role of mPFC->PVT projections in naturalistic (unconditioned) social processing in addition to their known function in Pavlovian conditioning and extinction.
“Our study sheds light on a previously unrecognized role of mPFC->PVT projections in naturalistic (unconditioned) social processing in addition to their known function in Pavlovian conditioning and extinction 15–18.”
From A prefrontal–paraventricular thalamus circuit requires juvenile social experience to regulate adult sociability in mice (2020) · cites this paper as [16]
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- Authors
- Campus, P., Covelo, I. R., Kim, Y., Parsegian, A., Kuhn, B. N., Lopez, S. A., Neumaier, J. F., Ferguson, S. M., Solberg Woods, L. C., Sarter, M., & Flagel, S. B.
- Affiliations
- University of Michigan (US)
- University of Washington (US)
- Department of Internal Medicine, Section on Molecular Medicine, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, United States
- Corresponding author
- Flagel, Shelly B
- ORCID
- Venue
- eLife
- Publisher
- eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
- Published
- 2019-09-10
- Volume
- 8
- ISSN
- 2050-084X (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6739869
- OpenAlex
- W2973048655
- Cited by
- 92
- References
- 68
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 16 · 2019: 3
- FWCI
- 6.45
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- eLife (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01-DA038599, T32-DA007268, T32-DA007821)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Keywords
- paraventricular thalamus, top-down control, incentive salience, sign-tracking, goal tracking, prelimbic cortex, dopamine, nucleus accumbens shell, reward cues, individual differences, addiction, chemogenetics, microdialysis
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Behavior, Animal, Cues, Limbic System, Motivation, Neural Pathways, Reward, Rats
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