Reward circuit
Mesolimbic dopamine signaling (VTA-nucleus accumbens)
Also searched as Mesolimbic dopamine signaling (VTA-nucleus accumbens).
Reward Response
In depth
The circuit that decides whether an effort was worth making. When it flattens, nothing feels worth starting; when it is driven too hard, only one thing does.
What drives it
The Sticky Switch increases it.
Together, these findings demonstrate that drugs of abuse and natural reward behaviors act on common molecular and cellular mechanisms of plasticity that control vulnerability to drug addiction, and that this increased vulnerability is mediated by ΔFosB and its downstream transcriptional targets. doi 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4881-12.2013
More Than Nature Made increases it.
PPU subjects when compared with control subjects showed increased activation of ventral striatum specifically for cues predicting erotic pictures but not for cues predicting monetary gains. doi 10.1038/npp.2017.78
Blends that modulate it
Each blend page names this pathway and carries the study behind its claim.
See it on the map
Open the causal map to follow this pathway upstream and downstream, arrow by arrow, each with its study.