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. 2018 Feb 21;9:731. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-03087-1

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© The Author(s) 2018

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Fig. 4 — Chemogenetic activation of the mesoaccumbens and the mesocortical pathway alters probabilistic discounting. a Task design. b Discounting curves for individual groups. (Left panel) Sham control group (saline vs CNO; Sidak’s test, p > 0.1 for all blocks). (Middle panel) During mesoaccumbens hyperactivity, animals have a smaller preference for the risky lever in the first block (Sidak’s test, p = 0.0468), a larger preference for the risky lever in the last block (p = 0.0468; blocks 2 and 3 both p > 0.1), and a significantly diminished discounting rate (inset, p = 0.0002). (Right panel) Mesocortical activation increased choice for the risky lever in the second block (Sidak’s test in block 2, p = 0.0247; blocks 1, 3, and 4, all p > 0.1). Asterisks in discounting curves indicate significant difference between saline and CNO treatment. Insets display the average steepness of the discounting curve (statistical comparison with Sidak’s test). c Mesoaccumbens activation reduces the percentage optimal choices in the probabilistic discounting task (i.e., % best choice in blocks 1, 3, and 4; two-way ANOVA; effect of CNO, p = 0.0331; group×CNO interaction, p = 0.0016; post-hoc Sidak’s test, p = 0.5082 for control group, p = 0.0004 for mesoaccumbens group, p = 0.7533 for mesocortical group). d Chemogenetic activation of the mesoaccumbens or mesocortical pathway had no effect on win-stay behavior (two-way ANOVA; effect of CNO, p = 0.36; group×CNO effect, p = 0.26), but did increase lose-stay behavior (two-way repeated ANOVA; effect of CNO, p = 0.0026; group×CNO effect, p = 0.0622; post-hoc Sidak’s test, p = 0.9988, p = 0.0177 and p = 0.0203 for control, mesoaccumbens, and mesocortical groups, respectively). e Task design of the probabilistic discounting task with increasing probabilities. f Mesoaccumbens activation did not affect the discounting curve (Sidak’s test in every block, p > 0.1). g Mesoaccumbens activation decreased performance on the task (paired t-test, p = 0.0143), but not win-stay (paired t-test, p = 0.32) or lose-stay behavior (paired t-test, p = 0.85). Data are shown as mean ± standard error of the mean; ns not significant, *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001