3/21/25 Erin Calipari: Hunger enhances goal representation in dorsal striatum dopamine to promote future approach
Neuroscience Brown Bag
Erin Calipari, PhD
Associate Professor of Pharmacology, Molecular Physiology and Biophysics
Director of Vanderbilt Center for Addiction Research
Vanderbilt Brain Institute
Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology and Inflammation
Date: Friday, March 21, 2025
Time: 1:25-2:15pm
Location: Wilson Hall 316
Hunger enhances goal representation in dorsal striatum dopamine to promote future approach
Hunger is a need state that drives food seeking and potentiates learning. We show that caloric restriction only enhances learning under conditions where actions are required, and positive outcomes reinforce behavior (both caloric or non-caloric). This is mediated by the potentiation of dopamine signals in the dorsomedial striatum (DMS) that integrate information about the spatial location of rewards and actions. These signals function to restrict animals to locations in an environment that have the high probability of reward. Dopamine release in the DMS was enhanced after action completion, but only in contexts where the spatial location of a reward was known. This effect scaled with distance from reward and was largest when mice were further away. Critically, this effect required prior spatial memory of the goal and acted to drive approach towards locations where rewards were located. Thus, hunger accelerates reinforcement learning through enhancing a movement-specific dopamine signal that is influenced by spatial proximity to rewards to drive goal-directed behavior.