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Lighting up the brain's reward circuitry

The brain's reward circuit is critical for mediating natural reward behaviors including food, sex, and social interaction. Drugs of abuse take over this circuit and produce persistent molecular and cellular alterations in the brain regions and their neural circuitry that make up the reward pathway. Recent use of optogenetic technologies has provided novel insights into the functional and molecular role of the circuitry and cell subtypes within these circuits that constitute this pathway. This perspective will address the current and future use of light‐activated proteins, including those involved in modulating neuronal activity, cellular signaling, and molecular properties in the neural circuitry mediating rewarding stimuli and maladaptive responses to drugs of abuse.