Background and Purpose
Incubation of craving is associated with temporal changes in the activity of several structures involved in drug-seeking behavior. Hypodopaminergic activity, responsible for negative emotional states, has been reported in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) during cocaine abstinence. The neuroadaptations underlying the VTA hyperdopaminergic state after chronic cocaine are not well understood. In this work, we investigated the potential involvement of a VTA inhibiting circuit (amygdala-ventral pallidum (VP) pathway) in the hypodopaminergic state associated with abstinence from chronic cocaine.