Khairunisa Mohamad Ibrahim, Nicolas Massaly, Hye-Jean Yoon, Rossana Sandoval, Allie J Widman, Robert J Heuermann, Sidney Williams, William Post, Sulan Pathiranage, Tania Lintz, Azra Zec, Ashley Park, Waylin Yu, Thomas L Kash, Robert W Gereau, Jose A Morón
The hippocampus is pivotal in integrating emotional processing, learning, memory, and reward-related behaviors. The dorsal hippocampus (dHPC) is particularly crucial for episodic, spatial, and associative memory, and has been shown to be necessary for context- and cue-associated reward behaviors. The nucleus accumbens (NAc), a central structure in the mesolimbic reward pathway, integrates the salience of aversive and rewarding stimuli. Despite extensive research on dHPC→NAc direct projections, their sufficiency in driving reinforcement and reward-related behavior remains to be determined...
January 29, 2024: Nature Communications