How the cholinergic and dopaminergic systems of the striatum interact and how these interface with the massive neocortical input to the striatum are classic questions of cardinal interest to neurology and psychiatry. In this issue of Neuron, Ding and colleagues show that a key to these puzzles lies in the thalamic inputs to the striatum targeting its cholinergic interneurons.

Glutamate concentrations in striatum and cortex were measured by means of in vivo cerebral microdialysis before and for 4 h after middle cerebral and ipsilateral common carotid artery occlusion in rats. The peak glutamate concentration reached 7.28 +/- 3.60 microM in dialysate from striatum and 5.64 +/- 2.24 microM in that from cortex. An index of exposure of each region to glutamate was calcul...

Although the involvement in the striatum in the refinement and control of motor movement has long been recognized, recent description of discrete frontal corticobasal ganglia networks in a range of species has focused attention on the role particularly of the dorsal striatum in executive functions. Current evidence suggests that the dorsal striatum contributes directly to decision-making, espec...

The brain "reward" system, centered on the limbic ventral striatum, plays a critical role in the response to pleasure and pain. The ventral striatum is activated in animal and human studies during anticipation of appetitive/pleasurable events, but its role in aversive/painful events is less clear. Here we present data from three human fMRI studies based on aversive conditioning using unpleasant...

The striatum is a major input site of the basal ganglia, which play an essential role in decision making. Previous studies have suggested that subareas of the striatum have distinct roles: the dorsolateral striatum (DLS) functions in habitual action, the dorsomedial striatum (DMS) in goal-directed actions, and the ventral striatum (VS) in motivation. To elucidate distinctive functions of subreg...

Ability to anticipate aversive events is important for avoiding dangerous or unpleasant situations. The motivation to avoid an event is influenced by the incentive salience of an event-predicting cue. In an avoidance fMRI task we used tone intensities to manipulate salience in order to study the involvement of the orbitofrontal cortex in processing of incentive salience. In the task, cues predi...

This Commentary compares the connections of the dopaminergic system with the striatum in rats and primates with respect to two levels of striatal organization: a tripartite functional (motor, associative and limbic) subdivision and a compartmental (patch/striosome–matrix) subdivision. The topography of other basal ganglia projections to the dopaminergic system with respect to their tripartite f...

UNLABELLED The ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) are two central nodes of the "reward circuit" of the brain. Human neuroimaging studies have demonstrated coincident activation and functional connectivity between these brain regions, and animal studies have demonstrated that the vmPFC modulates ventral striatum activity. However, there have been no comparable data in hu...

Spiny neurons in the neostriatum are highly vulnerable to cerebral ischemia. Recent studies have shown that the postischemic cell death in the right striatum was reduced after ipsilateral dopamine denervation whereas no protection was observed in the left striatum after dopamine denervation in the left side. In order to reveal the mechanisms of such asymmetrical protection, electrophysiological...