Motivation has been defined as the process that allows organisms to regulate their internal
and external environment, and control the probability, proximity and availability of stimuli. As …

There is a well-established literature linking obesity to altered dopamine signaling and brain
response to food-related stimuli. Neuroimaging studies frequently report enhanced …

Dopamine (DA) loss in Parkinson's disease (PD) causes debilitating motor deficits.
However, dopamine is also widely linked to reward prediction and learning, and the …

Obesity is associated with physical inactivity, which exacerbates the health consequences of
weight gain. However, the mechanisms that mediate this association are unknown. We …

Background Consumption of high-fat diet (HF) leads to hyperphagia and increased body
weight in male rodents. Female rodents are relatively resistant to hyperphagia and weight …

Understanding how dopamine (DA) encodes behavior depends on technologies that can
reliably monitor DA release in freely-behaving animals. Recently, red and green genetically …

Dopamine receptors play an important role in motivational, emotional, and motor responses.
In addition, growing evidence suggests a key role of hippocampal dopamine receptors in …

Exercise increases positive mood and the ability to buffer the impact of aversive events on
the brain and behavior, but if and how these beneficial effects of exercise interact to confer …

Rationale Effort-related motivational symptoms, such as anergia, psychomotor retardation,
and fatigue, are an important aspect of depression and other disorders. Motivational …

Physical inactivity is a primary contributor to diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular
disease, and type 2 diabetes. Accelerometry data suggest that a majority of US adults fail to …