Mercè Correa

TL;DR: The complex roles of dopamine in behavioral functions related to motivation are discussed, including behavioral activation, exertion of effort, approach behavior, sustained task engagement, Pavlovian processes, and instrumental learning.

TL;DR: Along with prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, nucleus accumbens is a component of the brain circuitry regulating effort-related functions and may have implications for understanding drug abuse, as well as energy-related disorders such as psychomotor slowing, fatigue, or anergia in depression.

TL;DR: Findings are reviewed in support of the hypothesis that low doses of DA antagonists and accumbens DA depletions do not impair appetite to consume food, but do impair activational aspects of motivation, and several complex features of the literature on dopaminergic involvement in reinforcement are examined.

TL;DR: According to the dopamine (DA) hypothesis of reward, DA systems in the brain, particularly in the nucleus accumbens, are thought to directly mediate the rewarding or primary motivational characteristics of natural stimuli such as food, water and sex, as well as various drugs of abuse.

TL;DR: Accumbens DA may be important for enabling rats to overcome behavioral constraints, such as work-related response costs, and may be critical for the behavioral organization and conditioning processes that enable animals to engage in vigorous responses, or to emit large numbers of responses in ratio schedules in the absence of primary reinforcement.