Learning from one’s mistakes: A dual role for the rostromedial tegmental nucleus in the encoding and expression of punished reward seeking

摘要

BackgroundPsychiatric disorders such as addiction and mania are marked by persistent reward-seeking despite highly negative or aversive outcomes, but the neural mechanisms underlying this aberrant decision-making are unknown. The recently identified rostromedial tegmental nucleus (RMTg) encodes a wide variety of aversive stimuli and sends robust inhibitory projections to midbrain dopamine neurons, leading to the hypothesis that the RMTg provides a brake to reward signaling in response to aversive costs (, ).