Addiction: Making the Connection Between Behavioral Changes and Neuronal Plasticity in Specific Pathways

Addiction-related pathways in the rat brain. The VTA contains both dopamine and GABA neurons that innervate the nucleus accumbens, prefrontal cortex, and other forebrain targets not shown in the diagram. The prefrontal cortex sends glutamate projections to VTA, LDT, nucleus accumbens, and other limbic regions not shown in the diagram (see Figure 1). In the VTA, glutamate inputs from prefrontal cortex synapse on mesoaccumbens GABA neurons and mesoprefrontal DA neurons. Mesoaccumbens dopamine neurons also receive glutamate and cholinergic inputs from the LDT (cholinergic inputs not shown). See legend to Figure 3 for more details.