Adaptive Behavior Without New Learning: Salt Appetite and the Ventral Pallidum

[sechang]

Material below summarizes the article, Optogenetic Inhibition of Ventral Pallidum Neurons Impairs Context-Driven Salt-Seeking, published on May 11, 2017, in JNeurosci and authored by Stephen E. Chang, Elizabeth B. Smedley, Katherine J. Stansfield, Jeffrey J. Stott, and Kyle S. Smith.

Our behavior is strongly influenced by the environmental cues around us. For example, cues associated with rewards, such as food, money, and drugs, can predict the availability of the rewards, and they can also acquire rewarding properties themselves. The acquisition of these cue-triggered behaviors is often considered to be the result of experience with the particular cue and its associated outcome.

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