Neurobiology of Thirst and Hunger Drives

Thirst and hunger drives are fundamental survival mechanisms that transform physiological need into motivated behavior. In the brain, discrete types of circumventricular and hypothalamic neurons serve as neural circuit elements underlying thirst and hunger drives. These neurons receive signals of dehydration and starvation arising from outside the brain and communicate these homeostatic needs to downstream neural circuit elements. Recent advances in neural circuit activity recording and control in behaving mammals have elucidated how direct and indirect targets of these cells encode goal-relevant, affective, autonomic, and behavioral components of the drives, resulting in a finely tuned, robust, and flexible set of survival-appropriate behaviors.