Home > The Ventral tegmental area and nucleus accumbens as circadian oscillators: implications for drug abuse and substance use disorders.

Becker-Krail, Darius D and Walker, William H and Nelson, Randy J (2022) The Ventral tegmental area and nucleus accumbens as circadian oscillators: implications for drug abuse and substance use disorders. Frontiers in Physiology, 13, 886704. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2022.886704.

External website: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys...

Circadian rhythms convergently evolved to allow for optimal synchronization of individuals' physiological and behavioral processes with the Earth's 24-h periodic cycling of environmental light and temperature. Whereas the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) is considered the primary pacemaker of the mammalian circadian system, many extra-SCN oscillatory brain regions have been identified to not only exhibit sustainable rhythms in circadian molecular clock function, but also rhythms in overall region activity/function and mediated behaviors. In this review, we present the most recent evidence for the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and nucleus accumbens (NAc) to serve as extra-SCN oscillators and highlight studies that illustrate the functional significance of the VTA's and NAc's inherent circadian properties as they relate to reward-processing, drug abuse, and vulnerability to develop substance use disorders (SUDs).


Item Type
Article
Publication Type
International, Open Access, Review, Article
Drug Type
All substances
Intervention Type
Prevention, Harm reduction
Date
April 2022
Identification #
doi: 10.3389/fphys.2022.886704
Volume
13
EndNote

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