“…The LPO sends monosynaptic glutamatergic and GABAergic projections to the ventral tegmental area (VTA) (Phillipson, 1979;Geisler and Zahm, 2005;Watabe-Uchida et al, 2012;Ogawa et al, 2014;Beier et al, 2015;Kalló et al, 2015), which is a critical regulator of drug seeking and taking. Stimuli that increase the activity of dopamine neurons of the VTA increase cocaine seeking and those that increase GABA transmission in the VTA decrease seeking (Phillips et al, 2003;Marinelli et al, 2006;Wise, 2013;Jin et al, 2018). Furthermore, the LPO projects to brain regions that influence the activity of VTA neurons, including, but not limited to, the lateral habenula (Mok and Mogenson, 1972;Kowski et al, 2008;Yetnikoff et al, 2015;Barker et al, 2017), rostromedial tegmental nucleus (Jhou et al, 2009;Yetnikoff et al, 2015), and dorsal raphe (Peyron et al, 1998;Ogawa et al, 2014).…”