# Defining the role of an amygdalostriatal circuit in cocaine seeking and relapse

> **NIH NIH F32** · UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA · 2021 · $57,958

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Drug-associated stimuli (“cues”: sights, sounds, places) have a powerful influence over behavior in addiction1–4.
In animal models, cues are typically studied in isolation, but in real life, addicts experience many types of drug-
related stimuli at the same time, and little is known about the neural circuits that encode and control multi-cue
relationships to guide drug seeking. In previous experiments, I have demonstrated that following intermittent,
binge-like cocaine self-administration in rats, a cue associated with general drug availability in the rat’s
environment (the availability cue) gates the motivational impact of a cue associated with drug delivery (the
drug-delivery cue) to trigger cocaine-seeking actions. This indicates that different types of drug cues can
interact in a hierarchical fashion to control drug-seeking motivation. Dopamine signaling has received attention
for its role in reward-related processes, including drug seeking1,2,5,6. Ablations of dopamine terminals in the
nucleus accumbens (NAc) disrupt drug self-administration7,8, and blocking NAc dopamine receptors attenuates
the ability of drug-associated cues to promote drug seeking9. In human addicts, striatal dopamine release in
response to drug-associated cues is associated with increased drug craving and future relapse10,11. Though NAc
dopamine has been generally implicated in addiction, it is unknown how dopamine signaling 1) is altered by
voluntary intermittent, binge-like cocaine use, or 2) encodes hierarchical cue relationships that guide relapse.
Fiber photometry, in combination with a fluorescent dopamine sensor, dLight, provides a method to assess these
questions by directly measuring in vivo activity changes at dopamine receptors with spatiotemporal precision12.
Therefore, in Aim 1, I will utilize fiber photometry to measure changes in NAc dopamine signaling during binge-
like cocaine use and subsequent multi-cue-induced relapse. While dopamine may have a role in signaling the
motivational value of reward-paired cues, it remains unclear how hierarchical cue information is transmitted to
the striatum to gate motivation and control relapse. Projections from the basolateral amygdala (BLA) to the NAc
have a role in signaling contextual information that guides reward seeking, suggesting they may be important for
gating cue-controlled drug seeking13,14. In Aim 2, I propose to investigate this by optogenetically inhibiting (Aim
2.1) or exciting (Aim 2.2) the BLA-NAc circuit during single- and multi-cue relapse tests, to determine the
necessity and sufficiency of the circuit in mediating hierarchical cue information to control drug seeking.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10145456
- **Project number:** 1F32DA051138-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
- **Principal Investigator:** Anne Collins
- **Activity code:** F32 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $57,958
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-02-08 → 2021-11-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10145456

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10145456, Defining the role of an amygdalostriatal circuit in cocaine seeking and relapse (1F32DA051138-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10145456. Licensed CC0.

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