Pleasure rather than salience activates human nucleus accumbens and medial prefrontal cortex.

Nucleus Accumbens and Medial Prefrontal Cortex Pleasure Rather Than Salience Activates Human

Prefrontal/accumbal catecholamine system determines motivational salience attribution to both reward- and aversion-related stimuli.

Recent evidence suggests that rewarding and aversive stimuli affect the same brain areas, including medial prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens. Although nucleus accumbens is known to respond to salient stimuli, regardless of their hedonic valence, with selective increased dopamine release, little is known about the role of prefrontal cortex in reward- and aversion-related motivation or abou...

Emotional imagery: assessing pleasure and arousal in the brain's reward circuitry.

Research on emotional perception and learning indicates appetitive cues engage nucleus accumbens (NAc) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), whereas amygdala activity is modulated by the emotional intensity of appetitive and aversive cues. This study sought to determine patterns of functional activation and connectivity among these regions during narrative emotional imagery. Using event-related ...

The Study of Apomorphine Effects and Heterogeneity in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex on the Dopaminergic Behaviors of Rats

Objective(s) While the nucleus accumbens and the striatum have received much attention regarding their roles in stereotyped behaviors, the role of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has not been investigated to the same degree. Few studies have reported the role of the mPFC in dopaminergic induction of locomotor hyperactivity. The mPFC is a heterogeneous area (the anterior cingulated, prelimbi...

Violence as a source of pleasure or displeasure is associated with specific functional connectivity with the nucleus accumbens

The appraisal of violent stimuli is dependent on the social context and the perceiver's individual characteristics. To identify the specific neural circuits involved in the perception of violent videos, forty-nine male participants were scanned with functional MRI while watching video-clips depicting Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and Capoeira as a baseline. Prior to scanning, a self-report measure o...