Wallace Deanna L, Vialou Vincent, Rios Loretta, Carle-Florence Tiffany L, Chakravarty Sumana, Kumar Arvind, Graham Danielle L, Green Thomas A, Kirk Anne, Iñiguez Sergio D, Perrotti Linda I, Barrot Michel, DiLeone Ralph J, Nestler Eric J, Bolaños-Guzmán Carlos A
Department of Psychiatry, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas 75390-9070, USA.
J Neurosci. 2008 Oct 8;28(41):10272-7. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1531-08.2008.
The transcription factor deltaFosB (DeltaFosB), induced in nucleus accumbens (NAc) by chronic exposure to drugs of abuse, has been shown to mediate sensitized responses to these drugs. However, less is known about a role for DeltaFosB in regulating responses to natural rewards. Here, we demonstrate that two powerful natural reward behaviors, sucrose drinking and sexual behavior, increase levels of DeltaFosB in the NAc. We then use viral-mediated gene transfer to study how such DeltaFosB induction influences behavioral responses to these natural rewards. We demonstrate that overexpression of DeltaFosB in the NAc increases sucrose intake and promotes aspects of sexual behavior. In addition, we show that animals with previous sexual experience, which exhibit increased DeltaFosB levels, also show an increase in sucrose consumption. This work suggests that DeltaFosB is not only induced in the NAc by drugs of abuse, but also by natural rewarding stimuli. Additionally, our findings show that chronic exposure to stimuli that induce DeltaFosB in the NAc can increase consumption of other natural rewards.
慢性暴露于滥用药物会在伏隔核（NAc）中诱导产生转录因子δFosB（DeltaFosB），研究表明它能介导对这些药物的敏感反应。然而，关于DeltaFosB在调节对自然奖赏的反应中所起的作用，我们了解得较少。在此，我们证明了两种强烈的自然奖赏行为，即蔗糖饮用和性行为，会增加NAc中DeltaFosB的水平。然后，我们利用病毒介导的基因转移来研究这种DeltaFosB的诱导如何影响对这些自然奖赏的行为反应。我们证明，在NAc中过表达DeltaFosB会增加蔗糖摄入量并促进性行为的某些方面。此外，我们表明，有过性经验且DeltaFosB水平升高的动物，其蔗糖消耗量也会增加。这项研究表明，DeltaFosB不仅会被滥用药物在NAc中诱导产生，也会被自然奖赏刺激所诱导。此外，我们的研究结果表明，长期暴露于能在NAc中诱导DeltaFosB的刺激下，会增加对其他自然奖赏的消耗。
