Activation of VTA GABA neurons disrupts reward consumption

By Ruud van Zessen, Jana L Phillips, E. Budygin, Garret D. Stuber. Neuron, 2012

609 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The activity of Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) dopamine (DA) neurons promotes behavioral responses to rewards and environmental stimuli that predict them. VTA GABA inputs synapse directly onto DA neurons and may regulate DA neuronal activity to alter reward-related behaviors, however, the functional consequences of selective activation of VTA GABA neurons remains unknown. Here, we show that in vivo optogenetic activation of VTA GABA neurons disrupts reward consummatory behavior, but not conditioned anticipatory behavior in response to reward-predictive cues. In addition, direct activation of VTA GABA projections to the nucleus accumbens (NAc) resulted in detectable GABA release, but did not alter reward consumption. Furthermore, optogenetic stimulation of VTA GABA neurons directly suppressed the activity and excitability of neighboring DA neurons, as well as the release of DA in the NAc, suggesting that the dynamic interplay between VTA DA and GABA neurons can control the initiation and termination of reward-related behaviors.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e4f7ac7dbe75cb3cdb3a8c55ddce2bc9f859de89

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

1. Wolfram Schultz
2. R. Malenka
3. S. Lammel
4. Bryan L. Roth
5. B. Lim
6. K. Tye
7. Karl Deisseroth
8. C. Lüscher

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. R. Malenka
2. S. Lammel
3. B. Lim
4. K. Tye
5. Karl Deisseroth
6. C. Lüscher
7. Wolfram Schultz
8. John Salamone

Citations in the corpus

• Neuronal Reward and Decision Signals: From Theories to Data. (2015, background): “Similar place dispreference is elicited by activating midbrain GABA neurons that inhibit dopamine neurons (613) or by directly inhibiting dopamine neurons (244, 582).”
• GABA Neurons of the VTA Drive Conditioned Place Aversion (2012, background): “These findings are in line with the companion paper in this issue of Neuron (van Zessen et al., 2012).”
• A New DREADD Facilitates the Multiplexed Chemogenetic Interrogation of Behavior (2015, positive): “Since previous studies have demonstrated that optogenetic modulation of VTA/SNVGAT neurons can modify locomotion (van Zessen et al., 2012), we predicted that chemogenetic silencing via KORD of VTA/SNVGAT neurons (Figs 2B and 2C) would increase locomotion.”
• Reward and aversion in a heterogeneous midbrain dopamine system (2013, background): “However, activation of VTA GABA neurons projecting to NAc does not alter reward consumption (Van Zessen et al., 2012).”
• The mysterious motivational functions of mesolimbic dopamine. (2012, positive): “A recent optogenetics study showed that stimulating ventral tegmental GABA neurons, which results in the inhibition of DA neurons, acted to suppress food intake (van Zessen et al., 2012).”