Nucleus accumbens core acetylcholine receptors modulate the balance of flexible and inflexible cue-directed motivation.

Sign-tracking is a conditioned response where animals interact with reward-predictive cues due to the cues having motivational value, or incentive salience. The nucleus accumbens core (NAc) has been implicated in mediating the sign-tracking response. Additionally, acetylcholine (ACh) transmission throughout the striatum has been attributed to both incentive motivation and behavioral flexibility.

Chronic chemogenetic manipulation of ventral pallidum targeted neurons in male rats fed an obesogenic diet.

Current treatments for obesity do not reliably reduce body weight over time. New interventional strategies, including chemogenetics, carry promise based on preclinical animal studies. Here, we focused on the ventral pallidum (VP) due to its clearly established role in eating behavior.

Opioid and Sucrose Craving Are Accompanied by Unique Behavioral and Affective Profiles after Extended Abstinence in Male and Female Rats.

Incubation of craving refers to the intensification of drug-seeking behavior in response to reward-paired cues over the course of abstinence. In rodents, craving and drug-seeking behaviors have been measured by an increase in lever pressing in the absence of reinforcer availability in response to cue presentations. However, craving in rodents is difficult to define and little is known about the behavioral signatures that accompany increased drug-seeking behavior measured by lever pressing.

Circuit directionality for motivation: Lateral accumbens-pallidum, but not pallidum-accumbens, connections regulate motivational attraction to reward cues.

Sign-tracking behavior, in which animals interact with a cue that predicts reward, provides an example of how incentive salience can be attributed to cues and elicit motivation. The nucleus accumbens (NAc) and ventral pallidum (VP) are two regions involved in cue-driven motivation. The VP, and NAc subregions including the medial shell and core, are critical for sign-tracking.

Evidence for a shared representation of sequential cues that engage sign-tracking.

Sign-tracking is a phenomenon whereby cues that predict rewards come to acquire their own motivational value (incentive salience) and attract appetitive behavior. Typically, sign-tracking paradigms have used single auditory, visual, or lever cues presented prior to a reward delivery. Yet, real world examples of events often can be predicted by a sequence of cues.

Evidence of structure and persistence in motivational attraction to serial Pavlovian cues.

Sign-tracking is a form of autoshaping where animals develop conditioned responding directed toward stimuli predictive of an outcome even though the outcome is not contingent on the animal's behavior. Sign-tracking behaviors are thought to arise out of the attribution of incentive salience (i.e.

Optogenetic Inhibition of Ventral Pallidum Neurons Impairs Context-Driven Salt Seeking.

Salt appetite, in which animals can immediately seek out salt when under a novel state of sodium deprivation, is a classic example of how homeostatic systems interface with learned associations to produce an on-the-fly updating of motivated behavior. Neural activity in the ventral pallidum (VP) has been shown to encode changes in the value of salt under such conditions, both the value of salt itself (Tindell et al., 2006) and the motivational value of its predictive cues (Tindell et al.

Conductor gestures influence evaluations of ensemble performance.

Previous research has found that listener evaluations of ensemble performances vary depending on the expressivity of the conductor's gestures, even when performances are otherwise identical. It was the purpose of the present study to test whether this effect of visual information was evident in the evaluation of specific aspects of ensemble performance: articulation and dynamics. We constructed a set of 32 music performances that combined auditory and visual information and were designed to feature a high degree of contrast along one of two target characteristics: articulation and dynamics.

Transmission of hepatitis C virus to recipients of parenteral vitamin therapy in a primary care facility.

Background And Objectives: The Australian prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) is approximately 1%, with the majority of cases acquired through injecting drug use. However, occasionally HCV infection occurs in healthcare settings. Three new HCV infections were identified amongst patients attending a general practice in Sydney, Australia, specialising in parenteral vitamin therapy.

Refining the public health response to primary meningococcal conjunctivitis.

Primary meningococcal conjunctivitis (PMC) is accepted as an uncommon condition. This report describes two recent cases of PMC in newborn infants in a hospital nursery. In both cases the organisms identified were non-groupable strains of N.

Hepatitis A in south-eastern Sydney 1997-1999: continuing concerns for gay men and an outbreak among illicit drug users.

The incidence of hepatitis A virus (HAV) in south-eastern Sydney is one of the highest in Australia with large outbreaks previously associated with male-to-male sexual contact. We report HAV notification trends over the period 1 June 1997 to 31 May 1999 for this location. In the first twelve-month period, 233 cases were notified (crude rate 30.