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The nucleus accumbens shell in reinstatement and extinction of drug seeking
Author(s) -
Gibson Gabrielle D.,
Millan E. Zayra,
McNally Gavan P.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
european journal of neuroscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.346
H-Index - 206
eISSN - 1460-9568
pISSN - 0953-816X
DOI - 10.1111/ejn.14084
Subject(s) - nucleus accumbens , extinction (optical mineralogy) , neuroscience , psychology , context (archaeology) , compartmentalization (fire protection) , addiction , drug , cognitive psychology , biology , dopamine , psychiatry , paleontology , biochemistry , enzyme
The contexts where drugs are self‐administered have important control over relapse and extinction of drug‐seeking behavior. The nucleus accumbens shell (AcbSh) is essential to this contextual control over drug‐seeking behavior. It has been consistently implicated in both the expression of context‐induced reinstatement and the expression of extinction, across a variety of drug classes and other rewards. Here, we review the evidence linking AcbSh to the extinction and reinstatement of drug seeking. We consider whether this dual role can be linked to known heterogeneities in AcbSh cell types, their major afferents, and their major efferents. We show that although these heterogeneities are each important and can determine extinction vs. reinstatement, they do not seem adequate to explain the body of findings from the behavioral literature. Rather, we suggest that this functional specialization of AcbSh may be more profitably viewed in terms of the segregation and compartmentalization of AcbSh channels.