The habenula: from stress evasion to value-based decision-making

By Okihide Hikosaka. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2010

920 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Surviving in a world with hidden rewards and dangers requires choosing the appropriate behaviours. Recent discoveries indicate that the habenula plays a prominent part in such behavioural choice through its effects on neuromodulator systems, in particular the dopamine and serotonin systems. By inhibiting dopamine-releasing neurons, habenula activation leads to the suppression of motor behaviour when an animal fails to obtain a reward or anticipates an aversive outcome. Moreover, the habenula is involved in behavioural responses to pain, stress, anxiety, sleep and reward, and its dysfunction is associated with depression, schizophrenia and drug-induced psychosis. As a highly conserved structure in the brain, the habenula provides a fundamental mechanism for both survival and decision-making.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/07c06af66cec3a942087780296c7033df4f8efdf

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

In Molecular Biology

Citations in the corpus

Reward and aversion in a heterogeneous midbrain dopamine system (2013, background): “The same approach was taken to examine the connectivity and behavioral functions of the inputs to the VTA from the lateral habenula (LHb), a brain area thought to be critical for mediating behavioral responses to aversive stimuli and when expected rewards do not occur (Hikosaka, 2010).”
Social functioning in major depressive disorder. (2016, positive): “Further, an altered activity in the habenula (a structure located at the most caudal and dorsal part of the thalamus) might explain the reduced motivation to compete and reduced sensitivity to social reward by exerting a powerful inhibition on dopamine neurons (Hikosaka, 2010).”
Acetylcholine as a neuromodulator: cholinergic signaling shapes nervous system function and behavior (2012, background): “A number of studies have focused on the ability of the habenula , particularly the MHb, to oppose the behavioral processes mediated through the VTA (for reviews, see Fowler and Kenny, 2012 and Hikosaka, 2010).”
Neurophysiology of performance monitoring and adaptive behavior. (2014, background): “Thus the Hb seems to influence approach-avoidance decisions, impulsivity, and acute pain- and error-induced remedial actions; in particular, it has been suggested to regulate motor suppression induced by these diverse situations (241).”
The chronic mild stress (CMS) model of depression: History, evaluation and usage (2016, background): “The effect of CMS is transmitted from the amygdala to the VTAvia a projection involving the ventral pallidum (Chang and Grace, 2014), which in turn projects to the VTA via the lateral habenula and rostromedial tegmental nucleus (Hikosaka, 2010; Proulx et al., 2014).”
Sleep disorders and structural alterations in brain regions linked with motivation: a neuroimaging meta-analysis (2026, unknown): “REM disruption may also impair habenula function, which integrates limbic, circadian, and reward signals to regulate monoaminergic transmission (e.g., dopamine, serotonin) 119–121 .”