Inhibition of Dopamine Neurons Prevents Incentive Value Encoding of a Reward Cue: With Revelations from Deep Phenotyping

Overview

Journal bioRxiv

Date 2023 May 19

PMID 37205506

Authors

Amanda G Iglesias

Alvin S Chiu

Jason Wong

Paolo Campus

Fei Li

Zitong Nemo Liu

Shiv A Patel

Karl Deisseroth

Huda Akil

Christian R Burgess

Shelly B Flagel

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Significance Statement: Activity of dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) during cue presentation is necessary for the development of a sign-tracking, but not a goal-tracking, conditioned response in a Pavlovian task. We capitalized on the temporal precision of optogenetics to pair cue presentation with inhibition of VTA dopamine neurons. A detailed behavioral analysis with DeepLabCut revealed that cue-directed behaviors do not emerge without VTA dopamine. Importantly, however, when optogenetic inhibition is lifted, cue-directed behaviors increase, and a sign-tracking response develops. These findings confirm the necessity of VTA dopamine during cue presentation to encode the incentive value of reward cues.

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