Neural circuit elements that orchestrate cue-reward associations

The neural circuitry that encodes and mediates the establishment of cue-reward associations, an adaptive
process that is essential for survival, likely becomes dysfunctional in neuropsychiatric illnesses such as drug
addiction. While the full encoding of cue-reward associations require a distributed network of brain nuclei
acting in concert to orchestrate behavioral output, neurons in ventral tegmental area and upstream circuits in
cortex and hypothalamus are thought to play an important role in reward prediction and assigning incentive
salience to environmental cues such as those that become associated with repeated drug use. In this
application, we propose to state of the art deep brain two-photon imaging in awake and behaving mice to study
how the encoding properties within these circuits emerge and are altered during primary reward exposure as
well in associative learning. These experiments will provide important mechanistic information to explain how
reward circuits encode and control the development and expression of cue-reward associations relevant to
addiction.