“…These population and temporal firing mechanisms would allow liking, wanting, and prediction signals to be told apart within ventral striatopallidal circuits during natural appetite, drug intoxication or withdrawal, or stress states known to elevate reward measures (1,2,4,22,25,27,30,31,46,76). We suggest that these VP neuronal signals for reward components could be related to reports of activity in human posterior VP positively correlated with pleasant food images (17) and mechanisms by which opioid and related stimulation in a VP hotspot can modulate the hedonic impact of sensory rewards (33,36,77). Conversely, one could speculate that impairment of hedonic signals in NAc-VP pathways could contribute to clinical manifestations of anhedonia or incentive motivation impairment in depression and related disorders (78) or to dysphoria after lesions encroaching on the VP hotspot (79)(80)(81).…”