A Distinct Adolescent Profile for Activity and Dopamine Release in the Nucleus Accumbens during Pavlovian...

Across species, adolescence is a time of heightened reward sensitivity and enhanced impulsivity and risk-taking. In adults, these behavioral features are linked with a tendency to approach and interact with reward-associated cues-a behavior known as sign tracking (ST)-which is thought to reflect the transfer of incentive salience from reward to cue. Counterintuitively, adolescents are less likely to exhibit ST, compared with adults, and more likely to exhibit goal tracking, or approach to the site of reward. To investigate a possible neural basis for this age difference, we recorded the activity of individual neurons in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) of male and female rats during Pavlovian conditioning in adolescence and adulthood. In a separate group, we used a fluorescent indicator (GRAB_DA) to measure dopamine release at the same ages. We found that cue-evoked NAc activity increased over the course of training in adolescents and then further in adulthood. The majority of adolescents were goal trackers or intermediates, for whom reward-evoked activity peaked during adolescence and declined in adulthood, correlating with increased prevalence and intensity of ST. Meanwhile, cue-evoked dopamine release was markedly higher in sign trackers than in goal trackers at all time points. These results suggest that the progression from adolescence to adulthood may be accompanied by changes in the engagement of the mesolimbic dopamine system and/or the responsivity of NAc neural signaling to dopamine, contributing to limited sensitivity to reward cues, coupled with heightened sensitivity to primary rewards, in adolescent animals.