Behavioral functions of the mesolimbic dopaminergic system: an affective neuroethological perspective.

TL;DR: A comprehensive comparative analysis of the two neural circuits of social behavior network and mesolimbic reward system concludes that they were already present in early vertebrates and proposes that these circuits form a larger social decision‐making (SDM) network that regulates adaptive behavior.

TL;DR: The results demonstrate that reward has an impact on vision that is independent of its role in the strategic establishment of endogenous attention and suggests that reward plays an important and undervalued role in attentional control.

TL;DR: Since all vertebrates appear to have some capacity for primal affective feelings, the implications for animal-welfare and how the authors ethically treat other animals are vast.

TL;DR: The structure of opponency is considered in terms of previous biases about the nature of the decision problems that animals face, the conflicts that may arise between Pavlovian and instrumental responses, and an additional spectrum joining invigoration to inhibition to shed light on aspects of the role of serotonin and its interactions with dopamine.

TL;DR: It is found that brief exposure to a novel environment lowered the threshold for the induction of LTP, and an important role for dopamine-regulated synaptic plasticity in the storage of unpredicted information in the CA1 area is supported.

TL;DR: These findings suggest that the fore brain mechanism in question is the final common path to dreaming and that the brainstem oscillator that controls the REM state is just one of the many arousal triggers that can activate this forebrain mechanism.

TL;DR: A previously unappreciated capacity of the AFP to direct real-time changes in song is demonstrated and frontal cortical and basal ganglia areas may contribute to motor learning by biasing motor output towards desired targets or by introducing stochastic variability required for reinforcement learning.

TL;DR: In this article, the functions of the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) core and shell were investigated in mediating amphetamine-potentiated conditioned reinforcement and locomotion.