The hypothesis that dopamine is important for reward has been proposed in a number of
forms, each of which has been challenged. Normally, rewarding stimuli such as food, water …

Memory is an essential element to adaptive behavior since it allows consolidation of past
experience guiding the subject to consider them in future experiences. Among the …

In The Genesis of Animal Play, Gordon Burghardt examines the origins and evolution of play
in humans and animals. He asks what play might mean in our understanding of evolution …

The brain is wired to predict future outcomes. Experience-dependent plasticity at excitatory
synapses within dopamine neurons of the ventral tegmental area, a key region for a broad …

The ability of food to establish and maintain response habits and conditioned preferences
depends largely on the function of brain dopamine systems. While dopaminergic …

Dopaminergic neurons of the midbrain are the main source of dopamine (DA) in the brain.
DA has been shown to be involved in the control of movements, the signaling of error in …

Drinking water is innately rewarding to thirsty animals. In addition, the consumed value can
be assigned to behavioral actions and predictive sensory cues by associative learning. Here …

Recent studies suggest that there are multiple 'reward'or 'reward-like'systems that control
food seeking; evidence points to two distinct learning processes and four modulatory …

Despite the physiological complexity of the hypothalamus, its role is typically restricted to
initiation or cessation of innate behaviors. For example, theories of lateral hypothalamus …

Eating is a learned process. Our desires for specific foods arise through experience. Both
electrical stimulation and optogenetic studies have shown that increased activity in the …