Coordinated Reductions in Excitatory Input to the Nucleus Accumbens Underlie Food Consumption

Highlights

• Rostral and caudal NAc have distinct inputs with divergent feeding-related activity

• Consumption coincides with a synchronous dip in excitatory input to the rostral NAc

• Reduced excitatory input to the NAc shell from multiple sources promotes feeding

• Excitatory inputs to the NAc contain heterogeneous activity during reward seeking

Summary

Reward-seeking behavior is regulated by a diverse collection of inputs to the nucleus accumbens (NAc). The information encoded in each excitatory afferent to the NAc is unknown, in part because it is unclear when these pathways are active in relation to behavior. Here we compare the activity profiles of amygdala, hippocampal, and thalamic inputs to the NAc shell in mice performing a cued reward-seeking task using GCaMP-based fiber photometry. We find that the rostral and caudal ends of the NAc shell are innervated by distinct but intermingled populations of forebrain neurons that exhibit divergent feeding-related activity. In the rostral NAc shell, a coordinated network-wide reduction in excitatory drive correlates with feeding, and reduced input from individual pathways is sufficient to promote it. Overall, the data suggest that pathway-specific input activity at a population level may vary more across the NAc than between pathways.