Ventral tegmental area GABA neurons integrate positive and negative valence.

Ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine (DA) neurons are classically linked to Pavlovian reward learning and reinforcement. Intermingled VTA GABA neurons are positioned to regulate dopaminergic and striatal systems, but we lack critical insight into how this population contributes to conditioned motivation in different learning contexts. Recording DA and GABA neurons across multiple conditioning paradigms, we found that GABA neurons not only actively encode appetitive and aversive cues and outcomes separately, but uniquely integrate salient events of both valences to guide reward seeking.