About this Research Topic
There has been an explosion of interest recently in the Paraventricular Thalamus (PVT) due to recently described roles in orchestrating decisions and behaviors involving emotional salience. Evidence suggests that the PVT shapes behaviors by integrating information about the memory and salience of negative and positive experiences, which are functions highly relevant to the study of addiction and psychopathology.
There is accumulating literature on the PVT from diverse fields and perspectives. However, it has been hard to conceptualize the specific roles of the PVT based on this diverse literature. The goal of this Research Topic is to advance our understanding of the PVT across a variety of domains, including learning and memory, reward-related behaviors, sleep, and stress. Contributions to this Research Topic are expected to encompass a range of technical approaches, including optogenetics and DREADDs and to study the PVT at multiple levels of analysis including behavioral, synaptic, and molecular.
We are particularly interested in the following sub-topics:
• PVT’s role in drug reward cutting across categories of drugs of abuse
• Mechanisms in the PVT that tie together stress, emotional salience
• Mechanisms that underlie PVT regulation of sleep and circadian function
• Mechanisms related to behavioral response selection
We welcome mini reviews and original research papers focused on the above themes.
Keywords: PVT, Stress, Reward, Sleep, Circadian Rhythm
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
