Norepinephrine and dopamine transmission in 2 limbic regions differentially respond to acute noxious stimulation

Abstract

Summary Acute tail pinch induces distinct changes in limbic catecholamine neurotransmission, which may promote the physiological and behavioral responses necessary for survival.

Reciprocal Catecholamine Changes during Opiate Exposure and Withdrawal

“…Oral infusion of an appetitive tastant produces enhanced dopamine, whereas aversive tastants such as quinine suppress dopamine transients and increase norepinephrine signaling (Park et al, 2012;Roitman et al, 2008). This effect is also seen in animals undergoing reward learning and its extinction (Park et al, 2013), and during presentation of a painful stimulus (Park et al, 2015). Reciprocal catecholamine signaling has interesting implications in the context of the aversive stimulus of drug withdrawal, due to norepinephrine's possible influence on dopaminergic signaling.…”

“…Action potentials from the VTA drive transient dopamine concentration fluctuations in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) (Sombers et al, 2009) that increase following drug administration and can potentiate a drug's positively reinforcing properties (Covey et al, 2014). However, NAc dopamine may also play a role in the negatively reinforced component of drug abuse, since dopamine overflow is suppressed during noxious and aversive stimuli (Park et al, 2015;Roitman et al, 2008;Twining et al, 2015). Although basal dopamine levels decrease during withdrawal (Pothos et al, 1991;Weiss et al, 1996), previous work does not address its effect on phasic dopamine concentrations.…”

Mesocorticolimbic dopamine functioning in primary psychopathy: A source of within-group heterogeneity

“…5.2 Fronto-amygdalar DA and goal-directed behavior in primary psychopathy Dynamic fluctuations of DA output in fronto-amygdalar circuitry may be more closely involved in the attentional sensitivity, nervousness, and evaluative rumination when anticipating or preparing for stressful events (i.e., anxiety, anticipatory nervousness, paranoia) rather than the intuitive fear-sensation and impromptu fight-or-flight response when confronted with acute stressors or threat (i.e., fear) which has been more strongly related to heightened NE and serotonin reactivity (Schultz, 1998(Schultz, , 2002(Schultz, , 2007Harley et al, 2004;Schultz, 2007;Hurlemann et al, 2010;Boureau and Dayan, 2011;Grossmann et al, 2011;Park et al, 2015). In fact, unexpected threats, errors, and punishments that drive negative prediction-errors are strong phasic inhibitors of tonic DA activity and serve to stop ongoing behavior in order to react appropriately to such salient events (Schultz, 1998(Schultz, , 2002(Schultz, , 2007Boureau and Dayan, 2011;Park et al, 2015). In other words, the active role of DA in emotion is likely evaluative, attention-mediated, and anticipatory (stronger role towards conditioned stimuli), rather than acute, intuitive, and automated (both conditioned and unconditioned stimuli), which corresponds to the distinction between, respectively, anxiety and fear (Grillon, 2008).…”

Brain Circuits Encoding Reward from Pain Relief

“…In this study, a painful tail pinch performed on anesthetized rats elicited dopamine release in the dorsal striatum and in the core region of the nucleus accumbens, which are implicated in coding stimulus saliency (32). In contrast, in the nucleus accumbens shell, the most prominent region linked to reward coding, dopamine concentration was suppressed throughout the duration of the stimulus and increased when the tail pinch was removed (32, 33) (Fig. 1B).…”