Topic: paraventricular thalamus

Throughout our lifetime, we are constantly approaching or avoiding situations such as places associated with positive or negative outcomes, respectively. However, individuals are often confronted to a relative choice between two situations holding negative outcomes of different intensities, leading them to choose the least bad option. While extensive work focused on appetitive relative value coding, surprisingly little is known about the neural processes underlying relative value coding in an aversive context. To understand how animals make relative aversive choices, it is crucial to identify

Sweet, high-sugar containing foods are extremely palatable and often consumed in the absence of caloric needs, thereby driving positive energy balance and accelerating obesity development. Pharmacological studies suggest that endogenous opioid signaling in the brain mediates this specific appetite for sugar in satiety states; however, the cellular and circuit mechanisms remain unknown. We find that pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons, which are well known for their satiety promoting effects via the melanocortin-4 receptor system, selectively inhibit postsynaptic neurons in the paraventricular