Dopamine Operates as a Subsecond Modulator of Food Seeking

By M. Roitman, Garret D. Stuber, P. Phillips, R. Wightman, Regina M. Carelli. Journal of Neuroscience, 2004

701 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The dopamine projection to the nucleus accumbens has been implicated in behaviors directed toward the acquisition and consumption of natural rewards. The neurochemical studies that established this link made time-averaged measurements over minutes, and so the precise temporal relationship between dopamine changes and these behaviors is not known. To resolve this, we sampled dopamine every 100 msec using fast-scan cyclic voltammetry at carbon-fiber microelectrodes in the nucleus accumbens of rats trained to press a lever for sucrose. Cues that signal the opportunity to respond for sucrose evoked dopamine release (67 ± 20 nm) with short latency (0.2 ± 0.1 sec onset). When the same cues were presented to rats naive to the cue-sucrose pairing, similar dopamine signals were not observed. Thus, cue-evoked increases in dopamine in trained rats reflected a learned association between the cues and sucrose availability. Lever presses for sucrose occurred at the peak of the dopamine surges. After lever presses, and while sucrose was delivered and consumed, no further increases in dopamine were detected. Rather, dopamine returned to baseline levels. Together, the results strongly implicate subsecond dopamine signaling in the nucleus accumbens as a real-time modulator of food-seeking behavior.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience, Sensory Systems

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/550fce4c6ef165c7343c730db6118efd9f326b5e

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 Cognitive Neuroscience

In Sensory Systems

Citations in the corpus

The basal ganglia: learning new tricks and loving it. (2005, background): “Simultaneous, on-line recording of dopamine release and spike activity is a highly promising approach to this issue [51 ].”
The short-latency dopamine signal: a role in discovering novel actions? (2006, background): “is likely to be temporally coincident with the phasic DA input from the substantia nigr”
The debate over dopamine’s role in reward: the case for incentive salience (2007, background): “…dopamine systems, ranging from food, sex, and drugs to social and cognitive rewards (Aragona et al. 2006; Becker et al. 2001; Everitt and Robbins 2005; Fiorino et al. 1997; Koob and Le Moal 2006; Roitman et al. 2004; Small et al. 2003; Thut et al. 1997; Volkow and Wise 2005; Wise 1982, 1985).”
Overlapping neuronal circuits in addiction and obesity: evidence of systems pathology (2008, background): “Since then, voltammetry studies have shown that the presentation of a neutral stimulus that has been conditioned to food results in increases in striatal DA and that the DA increases are linked to the motoric behaviour required to procure the food (lever pressing; Roitman et al. 2004 ).”
The mysterious motivational functions of mesolimbic dopamine. (2012, positive): “…been seen in studies involving microdialysis (Sokolowski and Salamone, 1998; Ostlund et al., 2011; Hauber, 2010; Segovia et al., 2011), voltammetry (Roitman et al., 2004; Brown et al., 2011; Cacciapaglia et al., 2011), and electrophysiological recordings during free operant responding (Nishino et…”
‘Liking’ and ‘wanting’ food rewards: Brain substrates and roles in eating disorders (2009, neutral): “edly received) and their predictive cues [33,103–110].”
Effort-related functions of nucleus accumbens dopamine and associated forebrain circuits (2007, background): “Researchers continue to debate the significance of these phasic DA signals and how they are related to reward prediction, novelty, reinforcer-seeking, or other functions (Horvitz 2000; Schultz 2002; Ungless 2004; Roitman et al. 2004; Salamone et al. 2005; Lavin et al. 2005; Redgrave and Gurney 2006;”
What is reinforced by phasic dopamine signals? (2008, background): “…is clear that DA neurones can operate in a range of different modes (Fiorillo et al., 2003; Floresco et al., 2003; Grace, 1995; Heien et al., 2005; Roitman et al., 2004; Schultz, 2007; Venton and Wightman, 2007), the activity pattern that has received most attention in the context of…”
Affective neuroscience of pleasure: reward in humans and animals (2008, background): “Many fascinating studies have revealed predictive reward signals to be often coded by dopamine systems (Bayer and Glimcher 2005; Di Chiara and Bassareo 2007; Fields et al. 2007; Knutson et al. 2001; Knutson et al. 2007; McClure et al. 2003; Nicola et al. 2005; O’Doherty et al. 2006; Pessiglione et a”
Mesolimbic Dopamine Signals the Value of Work (2015, positive): “Subsecond increases in mesolimbic [DA] accompany motivated approach behaviors 14,15 , and dopamine ramps lasting several seconds have been reported as rats approach anticipated rewards 16 , without any obvious connection to RPE.”
Corticostriatal-hypothalamic circuitry and food motivation: integration of energy, action and reward. (2005, result): “, microdialysis and in vivo voltammetry) have yielded mixed results, some supporting [158–160] and others contradicting [161– 163] a selective role for dopamine transmission in the anticipatory phase of feeding.”
Associative learning mediates dynamic shifts in dopamine signaling in the nucleus accumbens (2007, background): “Although recent reports suggest that dopamine can actively produce or modulate operant reward-seeking behavior”