Joshua H Jennings

Mammalian neural circuits are sophisticated biological systems that choreograph behavioral processes vital for survival. While the inherent complexity of discrete neural circuits has proven difficult to decipher, many parallel methodological...

Lateral habenula (LHb) neurons convey aversive and negative reward conditions through potent indirect inhibition of ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopaminergic neurons. Although VTA dopaminergic neurons reciprocally project to the LHb,...

The growing prevalence of overeating disorders is a key contributor to the worldwide obesity epidemic. Dysfunction of particular neural circuits may trigger deviations from adaptive feeding behaviors. The lateral hypothalamus...

Complex motivated behavioral processes, such as those that can go awry following substance abuse and other neuropsychiatric disorders, are mediated by a distributive network of neurons that reside throughout the...

Optogenetic techniques have given researchers unprecedented access to the function of discrete neural circuit elements and have been instrumental in the identification of novel brain pathways that become dysregulated in...

The co-morbidity of anxiety and dysfunctional reward processing in illnesses such as addiction and depression suggests that common neural circuitry contributes to these disparate neuropsychiatric symptoms. The extended amygdala, including...

Background: The opioid-receptor antagonist naltrexone (NTX) reduces goal-directed alcohol drinking in rats presumably by blunting alcohol reward. However, different operant conditioning behavior can be produced by different reinforcement schedules, with...

Background: Safety signals exert a powerful buffering effect when provided during exposure to uncontrollable stressors. We evaluated the role of the sensory insular cortex (Si) and the extend amygdala in...