Different populations of subthalamic neurons encode cocaine vs. sucrose reward and predict future error.

The search for treatment of cocaine addiction raises the challenge to find a way to diminish motivation for the drug without decreasing it for natural rewards. Subthalamic nucleus (STN) inactivation decreases motivation for cocaine while increasing motivation for food, suggesting that STN can dissociate different rewards. Here, we investigated how rat STN neurons respond to cues predicting cocaine or sucrose and to reward delivery while rats are performing a discriminative stimuli task. We show that different neuronal populations of STN neurons encode cocaine and sucrose. In addition, we show that STN activity at the cue onset predicts future error. When changing the reward predicted unexpectedly, STN neurons show capacities of adaptation, suggesting a role in reward-prediction error. Furthermore, some STN neurons show a response to executive error (i.e., "oops neurons") that is specific to the missed reward. These results position the STN as a nexus where natural rewards and drugs of abuse are coded differentially and can influence the performance. Therefore, STN can be viewed as a structure where action could be taken for the treatment of cocaine addiction.

Decision making in elite white-water athletes paddling on a kayak ergometer.

The present study investigated the effects of acute paddling on performance in a typical decision-making task. It was aimed at assessing whether the effects of moderate exercise can be replicated using the feet as response effectors when physical exercise essentially solicits upper-body muscles. Twelve national-level paddling athletes performed a Simon task while paddling at a moderate (75% of maximal heart rate, HRmax) and at very light (40% of HR(max)) intensities. The results showed that the effects of moderate exercise can be generalized to exercises involving different response effectors and upper-body muscle groups. They suggest (1) that the activation-suppression hypothesis (Ridderinkhof, 2002) holds when the task is performed with the feet, and (2) that moderate exercise speeds up reaction time and impairs the suppression of direct response activation.

Beyond the reward pathway: coding reward magnitude and error in the rat subthalamic nucleus.

It was recently shown that subthalamic nucleus (STN) lesions affect motivation for food, cocaine, and alcohol, differentially, according to either the nature of the reward or the preference for it. The STN may thus code a reward according to its value. Here, we investigated how the firing of subthalamic neurons is modulated during expectation of a predicted reward between two possibilities (4 or 32% sucrose solution). The firing pattern of neurons responding to predictive cues and to reward delivery indicates that STN neurons can be divided into subpopulations responding specifically to one reward and less or giving no response to the other. In addition, some neurons ("oops" neurons) specifically encode errors as they respond only during error trials. These results reveal that the STN plays a critical role in ascertaining the value of the reward and seems to encode that value differently depending on the magnitude of the reward. These data highlight the importance of the STN in the reward circuitry of the brain.