Dopamine in the NAc shell is involved in the incentive motivation for alcohol, whereas dopamine in the DLS comes into play when obtaining alcohol requires high levels of effort (Robinson, Howard et al. 2009, Spoelder, Hesseling et al. 2016). These studies also show that dopamine neurotransmission is enhanced at several striatal subregions which might act in concert to mediate different aspects of ethanol-related behaviors.
