RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Cocaine place conditioning strengthens location-specific hippocampal inputs to the nucleus accumbens
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 105890
DO 10.1101/105890
A1 Lucas Sjulson
A1 Adrien Peyrache
A1 Andrea Cumpelik
A1 Daniela Cassataro
A1 György Buzsáki
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/02/03/105890.abstract
AB Conditioned place preference (CPP) is a widely used model of addiction-related behavior whose underlying mechanism is not understood. In this study, we used dual site silicon probe recordings in freely moving mice to examine interactions between the hippocampus and nucleus accumbens in cocaine CPP. We found that CPP was associated with recruitment of nucleus accumbens medium spiny neurons (MSNs) to fire in the cocaine-paired location, and this recruitment was driven predominantly by selective strengthening of hippocampal inputs arising from place cells that encode the cocaine-paired location. These findings provide in vivo evidence that the synaptic potentiation in the accumbens caused by repeated cocaine administration preferentially affects inputs that were active at the time of drug exposure. This provides a plausible physiological mechanism by which drug use becomes associated with specific environmental contexts.