title: Functional brain mapping of conscious rats during reward anticipation.
abstract: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in humans and non-primates has been useful to clarify the brain regions involved in the psychological process such as the reward anticipation. However, there is still no report of the fMRI study on the reward prediction in rodents. This is mainly because of the problem of anesthesia in rodent fMRI. In this study, we first developed awake fMRI method to investigate the brain region involved in reward anticipation in rats. After fMRI adaptation training, rats received light stimulation 1min before intraperitoneal infusion of ethanol solution (4g/kg body weight) in the MRI bore. Five or six days after the start of the experiment, the caudate-putamen, anterior insular cortex, hippocampus, ventral pallidum, nucleus accumbens and medial preoptic area were activated during light presentation. In contrast, no activation was observed in the control group. These results indicate the availability of awake fMRI method to investigate neural plasticity in the psychological process, learning, and memory such as the reward anticipation.
authors.affiliation: Frontier Research Labs, Institute for Innovation, Ajinomoto Co., Inc., 1-1 Suzuki-cho, Kawasaki-ku, Kawasaki 210-8601, Japan.
authors.forename: Tomokazu
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tsurugizawa
authors.forename: Akira
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Uematsu
authors.forename: Hisayuki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Uneyama
authors.forename: Kunio
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Torii
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D000431:Ethanol / Q000008:administration & dosage; D059907:Functional Neuroimaging / Q000379:methods*; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000502:physiology; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D051381:Rats; D012201:Reward
chemical_list: D000431:Ethanol