Differential Contributions of Ventral Striatum Subregions to the Motivational and Hedonic Components of the Affective Processing of Reward

Current therapeutics for addiction include several broad classes of medications including atypical antipsychotics such as Quetiapine and Risperidone. Incidentally, D2 antagonism is the most commonly suggested pathway these medications have been purported to act through.

If there is a way to measure or quantify the interplay between Pavlovian incentive and hedonic processes, would we be able to develop medications that preferentially target different subregions of the ventral striatum? Or do these findings suggest another mechanism which should be utilized for therapeutic development?

Ultimately, it is difficult to determine the value of these results as we still lack a full understanding of existing mechanisms used for current treatment.