Grant: Operating Grant

We are generally interested in the parts of the nervous system that underlie motivation, and we use opiates and nicotine as tools to study motivational processes because they are such potent motivational stimuli. Opiates (morphine, heroin) and nicotine produce rewarding or noxious effects depending on the circumstances under which they are administered. We and others have previously characterized a number of places in the brain where opiates and nicotine produce rewarding effects. The present proposal investigates the question of whether a single brain circuit underlies all opiate and nicotine reward or whether multiple parallel pathways in the brain are substrates for opiate and nicotine motivation.