The ventral striatum regulates motivated behaviors which are essential for survival. The ventral striatum contains both the nucleus accumbens (NAc), which is well established to contribute to motivated behavior, and the adjacent tubular striatum (TuS), which is poorly understood in this context. We reasoned that these ventral striatal subregions may be uniquely specialized in their neural representation of goal-directed behavior. To test this, we simultaneously examined TuS and NAc single-unit activity as male mice engaged in a sucrose self-administration task, which included extinction and cue-induced reinstatement sessions. While background levels of activity were comparable between regions, more TuS neurons were recruited upon reward-taking, and among recruited neurons, TuS neurons displayed greater changes in their firing during reward-taking and extinction than those in the NAc. Conversely, NAc neurons displayed greater changes in their firing during cue-reinstated reward-seeking. Interestingly, at least in the context of this behavioral paradigm, TuS neural activity predicted reward-seeking whereas NAc activity did not. Together, by directly comparing their dynamics in several behavioral contexts, this work reveals that the NAc and TuS ventral striatum subregions distinctly represent reward-taking and seeking.

中文翻译：

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管状纹状体和伏隔核明显代表奖励和寻求

腹侧纹状体调节对生存至关重要的动机行为。腹侧纹状体包含伏隔核 (NAc) 和相邻的管状纹状体 (TuS)，后者在此背景下知之甚少。我们推断这些腹侧纹状体亚区可能在其目标导向行为的神经表征方面具有独特的专长。为了测试这一点，我们同时检查了 TuS 和 NAc 单单位活动，因为雄性小鼠从事蔗糖自我管理任务，其中包括灭绝和提示诱导的恢复会话。虽然不同区域之间的背景活动水平相当，但在接受奖励时招募了更多的 TuS 神经元，并且在招募的神经元中，与 NAc 相比，TuS 神经元在奖励和灭绝期间的放电变化更大。相反，NAc 神经元在提示恢复的奖励寻求期间显示出更大的放电变化。有趣的是，至少在这种行为范式的背景下，TuS 神经活动预测了奖励寻求，而 NAc 活动则没有。总之，通过直接比较它们在几种行为环境中的动态，这项工作揭示了 NAc 和 TuS 腹侧纹状体子区域明显代表了奖励和寻求。