“…Neurochemical and neurophysiological studies have since identified adrenergic receptors on both DA projection neurons and GABA interneurons as well as both excitatory and inhibitory afferent terminals ( Rommelfanger et al, 2009 ; Mitrano et al, 2012 ; Velásquez-Martinez et al, 2012 ; Velásquez-Martínez et al, 2015 ) with alpha 1 -adrenergic receptors (α 1 -ARs) in the VTA serving as putative regulators of phasic DA efflux in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) ( Goertz et al, 2015 ; Park et al, 2017 ). In our previous studies, we have shown that the mesolimbic VTA-NAc pathway, in contrast to the mesocortical (VTA–prefrontal cortex) pathway, is especially susceptible to modulation via intra-VTA α 1 -AR antagonists ( Kielbinski et al, 2019 ). We have also shown that α 1 -AR microinfusion into the VTA potently inhibits cocaine seeking under extinction conditions, while sparing natural reward processing, i.e., having no effect on food seeking ( Solecki et al, 2018 , 2019a ).…”