Glossary
Ventral striatum
What is the ventral striatum?
The ventral striatum, including the nucleus accumbens, is part of connected brain circuits involved in reward-related processing, motivation, and learning.
How it works
It receives dopamine-containing input from midbrain regions including the ventral tegmental area (VTA), alongside inputs from cortical and other subcortical structures. Haber and Knutson describe reward processing across this broader network.
A reward prediction error is the difference between the reward obtained and the reward expected: better-than-expected outcomes give a positive error, and worse-than-expected outcomes give a negative one. Researchers examine how these signals relate to learning.
“Wanting”, in incentive-salience research, means the motivational pull of a reward or its cue. “Liking” means its pleasurable or hedonic impact. A cue can strongly motivate pursuit without a matching increase in pleasure. These functions involve partly distinct mechanisms within the wider reward network.
Example: learning a reward cue
Haber and Knutson describe a study in which people learned associations between cues and rewarding or unpleasant odors. As learning progressed, nucleus accumbens responses to the rewarding cue increased while amygdala responses decreased. Measuring activity as the association develops helps distinguish learning to anticipate a reward from responding to the reward itself.
Reward, depression, and addiction
Reward circuits are relevant to research on motivational difficulties and addictive behavior. An observation in one region is not a complete explanation of a disorder or every motivated action.
Why it matters
The ventral striatum is an important part of reward circuitry. Understanding its connections helps explain how it works within the wider network.