# Basolateral amygdala dopamine in addiction-related learning strategies

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA · 2024 · $417,861

## Abstract

Project Summary
Environmental stimuli (“cues” – sensory information such as sights, sounds, and smells) help organize reward
seeking and decision making. In disease states like addiction drug-related cues can acquire powerful control
over behavior, promoting exaggerated drug intake and relapse. Cues vary in their sensory modality, temporal
profile, and their relationship with one another and behavior. Within this complex sensory landscape, not all
individuals respond the same way to reward cues. For example, some rats, when trained to associate a
discrete, localizable cue with a food reward in a Pavlovian conditioning procedure, develop cue-directed
approach behavior, known at sign tracking. Other rats develop approach behavior directed at the location of
reward delivery, termed goal tracking. In preliminary studies we expand this notion to show that discrete
versus state-based drug-associated cues preferentially evoke relapse of drug seeking in different subsets of
rats. Here, we will investigate how Pavlovian reward-learning strategies (e.g., sign versus goal tracking) predict
an individual’s unique relapse trigger, for greater understanding of vulnerability to addiction. To explore the
neural mechanisms of these behaviors, we focus on the basolateral amygdala (BLA), a critical brain site for
the integration of sensory and emotional information to guide associative learning and goal-directed behavior.
Dopamine neurons, in addition to their classic striatal targets, also project strongly to the BLA, where densely
expressed D1-type dopamine receptors reside. Here, we will examine the role of BLA dopamine and D1
neurons in the emergence and expression of reward-based learning and addiction-like behaviors. In three
Aims, we will test the central hypothesis that individual differences in reward learning strategies reflect
biased responsivity to proximal vs state-based sensory information, resulting in unique vulnerabilities
to addiction-like behavior that are encoded and controlled by dopamine signaling within the BLA.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10799879
- **Project number:** 1R01DA057292-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
- **Principal Investigator:** Benjamin Thomas Saunders
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $417,861
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-09-15 → 2029-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10799879

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10799879, Basolateral amygdala dopamine in addiction-related learning strategies (1R01DA057292-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10799879. Licensed CC0.

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