The lateral habenula (LHb) is activated by aversive stimuli and the omission of reward, inhibited by rewarding stimuli and is hyperactive in helpless rats—an animal model of depression. Here we test the hypothesis that congenital learned helpless (cLH) rats are more sensitive to decreases in reward size and/or less sensitive to increases in reward than wild-type (WT) control rats. Consistent with the hypothesis, we found that cLH rats were slower to switch preference between two responses after a small upshift in reward size on one of the responses but faster to switch their preference after a small downshift in reward size. cLH rats were also more risk-averse than WT rats—they chose a response delivering a constant amount of reward (“safe” response) more often than a response delivering a variable amount of reward (“risky” response) compared to WT rats. Interestingly, the level of bias toward negative events was associated with the rat's level of risk aversion when compared across individual rats. cLH rats also showed impaired appetitive Pavlovian conditioning but more accurate responding in a two-choice sensory discrimination task. These results are consistent with a negative learning bias and risk aversion in cLH rats, suggesting abnormal processing of rewarding and aversive events in the LHb of cLH rats.

The lateral habenula (LHb), a key regulator of monoaminergic brain regions, is activated by negatively-valenced events. Its hyperactivity is associated with depression. While enhanced excitatory input to the LHb has been linked to depression, little is known about inhibitory transmission. We discovered that GABA is co-released with its functional opponent, glutamate, from long-range basal ganglia inputs (which signal negative events) to limit LHb activity in rodents. At this synapse, the balance of GABA/glutamate signaling is shifted towards reduced GABA in a model of depression and increased GABA by antidepressant treatment. GABA and glutamate co-release therefore controls LHb activity, and regulation of this remarkable form of transmission may be important for determining the impact of negative life events on mood and behavior.

Summary The lateral habenula (LHb) has recently been identified as a key regulator of the reward system by driving inhibition onto dopaminergic neurons. However, the nature and potential modulation of the major input to the LHb originating from the basal ganglia are poorly understood. Although the output of the basal ganglia is thought to be primarily inhibitory, here we show that transmission from the basal ganglia to the LHb is excitatory, glutamatergic and suppressed by serotonin. Behaviorally, activation of this pathway is aversive, consistent with its role as an ‘anti-reward’ signal. Our demonstration of an excitatory projection from the basal ganglia to the LHb explains how LHb-projecting basal ganglia neurons can have similar encoding properties as LHb neurons themselves. Our results also provide a link between ‘anti-reward’ excitatory synapses and serotonin, a neuromodulator implicated in depression.

The amygdala is important for determining the emotional significance of environmental stimuli. However, the degree to which appetitive and aversive stimuli are processed by the same or different neuronal circuits within the amygdala remains unclear. Here we show that neuronal activity during the expression of classically conditioned appetitive and aversive emotional responses is more similar than expected by chance, despite the different sensory modalities of the eliciting stimuli. We also found that the activity of a large number of cells (> 43%) was correlated with blood pressure, a measure of emotional arousal. Together, our results suggest that a substantial proportion of neuronal circuits within the amygdala can contribute to both appetitive and aversive emotional arousal.autonomic ͉ electrophysiology ͉ emotion ͉ fear ͉ Pavlovian conditioning

The neural mechanisms conferring reduced motivation, as observed in depressed individuals, is poorly understood. Here, we examine in rodents if reduced motivation to exert effort is controlled by transmission from the lateral habenula (LHb), a nucleus overactive in depressed-like states, to the rostromedial tegmental nucleus (RMTg), a nucleus that inhibits dopaminergic neurons. In an aversive test wherein immobility indicates loss of effort, LHb→RMTg transmission increased during transitions into immobility, driving LHb→RMTg increased immobility, and inhibiting LHb→RMTg produced the opposite effects. In an appetitive test, driving LHb→RMTg reduced the effort exerted to receive a reward, without affecting the reward's hedonic property. Notably, LHb→RMTg stimulation only affected specific aspects of these motor tasks, did not affect all motor tasks, and promoted avoidance, indicating that LHb→RMTg activity does not generally reduce movement but appears to carry a negative valence that reduces effort. These results indicate that LHb→RMTg activity controls the motivation to exert effort and may contribute to the reduced motivation in depression.

Neuronal activity in the lateral habenula (LHb), a brain region implicated in depression [C. D. Proulx, O. Hikosaka, R. Malinow, Nat. Neurosci. 17, 1146-1152], decreases during reward and increases during punishment or reward omission [M. Matsumoto, O. Hikosaka, Nature 447, 1111-1115]. While stress is a major risk factor for depression and strongly impacts the LHb, its effect on LHb reward signals is unknown. Here we image LHb neuronal activity in behaving mice and find that acute stress transforms LHb reward responses into punishment-like neural signals; punishmentlike responses to reward omission also increase. These neural changes matched the onset of anhedonic behavior and were specific to LHb neurons that distinguished reward and its omission. Thus, stress distorts LHb responsivity to positive and negative feedback, which could bias individuals toward negative expectations, a key aspect of the proposed pathogenesis of depression [A. T. Beck, Depression: Clinical, Experimental, and Theoretical Aspects, sixth Ed (1967)]. habenula | stress | reward | anhedonia | prediction error L ateral habenula (LHb) neurons encode numerous stimuli including rewards, their omission, and punishment (1-7). In particular, the LHb provides reward prediction error (RPE) (2) signals-the difference between expected and actual reward value-a computation thought to be essential for an animal to learn from its environment (8-10). In this way, LHb activity, which is aversive (1, 11-13), can provide "teaching" signals to an animal: increased LHb activity (i.e., if actual reward value is less than expected) discourages repeating a behavior in the future (11,12,14), while decreased LHb activity is thought to reinforce a behavior.Human and nonhuman animal studies indicate that stressinduced changes in LHb activity may contribute to depression by suppressing reward-based behavior (1,(15)(16)(17)(18). While stress decreases reward sensitivity (19,20), is a major risk factor for depression (21, 22), forms the basis for most animal models of depression (23-25), and causes plasticity in the LHb (26-31), its effects on LHb reward and RPE signals are not known. Here, we use calcium-imaging techniques to monitor RPE from individual LHb neurons in awake, behaving mice in the absence and presence of intermittent tail shock stress. Surprisingly, we find that stress causes the LHb to respond to rewards as if they were punishment. This switch is tightly linked temporally with onset of anhedonic behavior, suggesting that this aberrant LHb responsivity contributes to anhedonia (29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35). These changes were also accompanied by a larger (i.e., "more negative") LHb signal to reward omission. Our results indicate that stress causes a negative shift in LHb signaling of reward and its omission. While potentially adaptive in some conditions (e.g., suppressing reward-seeking behavior during threat), repeated occurrence of such effects could contribute to the pathogenesis of depression. ResultsRPE Encoding in a Subpopulation of LHb Neurons. W...

Much research has focused on how the amygdala processes individual affects, yet little is known about how multiple types of positive and negative affects are encoded relative to one another at the single-cell level. In particular, it is unclear whether different negative affects, such as fear and disgust, are encoded more similarly than negative and positive affects, such as fear and pleasure. Here we test the hypothesis that the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala (BLA), a region known to be important for learned fear and other affects, encodes affective valence by comparing neuronal activity in the BLA during a conditioned fear stimulus (fear CS) with activity during intraoral delivery of an aversive fluid that induces a disgust response and a rewarding fluid that induces a hedonic response. Consistent with the hypothesis, neuronal activity during the fear CS and aversive fluid infusion, but not during the fear CS and rewarding fluid infusion, was more similar than expected by chance. We also found that the greater similarity in activity during the fear- and disgust-eliciting stimuli was specific to a subpopulation of cells and a limited window of time. Our results suggest that a subpopulation of BLA neurons encodes affective valence during learned fear, and furthermore, within this subpopulation, different negative affects are encoded more similarly than negative and positive affects in a time-specific manner.

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