RESEARCH ARTICLE Activation of the dopaminergic pathway from VTA to the medial olfactory tubercle generates odor-preference and reward Zhijian Zhang1,2†, Qing Liu1†, Pengjie Wen1, Jiaozhen Zhang1, Xiaoping Rao1, Ziming Zhou3, Hongruo Zhang3, Xiaobin He1, Juan Li1, Zheng Zhou4, Xiaoran Xu3, Xueyi Zhang3, Rui Luo3, Guanghui Lv2, Haohong Li2, Pei Cao1, Liping Wang4, Fuqiang Xu1,2* 1Center for Brain Science, Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance in Biological Systems, Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China; 2Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Wuhan, China; 3College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China; 4Shenzhen Key Lab of Neuropsychiatric Modulation and Collaborative Innovation Center for Brain Science, CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China Abstract Odor-preferences are usually influenced by life experiences. However, the neural circuit mechanisms remain unclear. The medial olfactory tubercle (mOT) is involved in both reward and olfaction, whereas the ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopaminergic (DAergic) neurons are considered to be engaged in reward and motivation. Here, we found that the VTA (DAergic)-mOT pathway could be activated by different types of naturalistic rewards as well as odors in DAT-cre mice. Optogenetic activation of the VTA-mOT DAergic fibers was able to elicit preferences for space, location and neutral odor, while pharmacological blockade of the dopamine receptors in the *For correspondence: mOT fully prevented the odor-preference formation. Furthermore, inactivation of the mOT-
[email protected] projecting VTA DAergic neurons eliminated the previously formed odor-preference and strongly †These authors contributed affected the Go-no go learning efficiency.