The ventral pallidum (VP) is a brain structure within the basal ganglia that is involved in the r... more The ventral pallidum (VP) is a brain structure within the basal ganglia that is involved in the regulation of motivation, behavior, and emotions. VP has also been found to play a special role in generating the hedonic impact (‘liking’) of food and other rewards. However, this ability is anatomically restricted to a roughly cubic millimeter ‘hedonic hotspot’ in its posterior half, and has shown to be activated by opioid or orexin microinjections. Previous work has shown that selective optogenetic stimulation of lateral hypothalamic (presumably orexinergic) inputs into the VP hotspot amplifies ‘liking’ to sucrose solutions, demonstrating the sufficiency of this pathway to recruit the VP hotspot and alter ‘liking’. Here, we explored the necessity of this LHVP pathway in hedonic processing by infusing an inhibitory optogenetic virus (hsyn-NpHr3.0mcherry) and implanting optic fibers into the VP hotspot to selectively knock out this pathway during taste reactivity and food intake behavior...
The ventral pallidum (VP) is a brain structure within the basal ganglia that is involved in the r... more The ventral pallidum (VP) is a brain structure within the basal ganglia that is involved in the regulation of motivation, behavior, and emotions. VP has also been found to play a special role in generating the hedonic impact (‘liking’) of food and other rewards. However, this ability is anatomically restricted to a roughly cubic millimeter ‘hedonic hotspot’ in its posterior half, and has shown to be activated by opioid or orexin microinjections. Previous work has shown that selective optogenetic stimulation of lateral hypothalamic (presumably orexinergic) inputs into the VP hotspot amplifies ‘liking’ to sucrose solutions, demonstrating the sufficiency of this pathway to recruit the VP hotspot and alter ‘liking’. Here, we explored the necessity of this LHVP pathway in hedonic processing by infusing an inhibitory optogenetic virus (hsyn-NpHr3.0mcherry) and implanting optic fibers into the VP hotspot to selectively knock out this pathway during taste reactivity and food intake behavior...
Uploads
Papers by Dema Fawaz