of drug reward. Instead, these data may be more compatible with a view of ventral striatal DA-activation as a signal predictive of alcohol reward, and perhaps involved in learning processes important for addiction 54. Of note, the level of alcohol-induce DA-activation in our study was overall lower than previously reported 10. A difference between the two studies is that alcohol administration was oral in the prior report, while we used intravenous administration. This may indicate that striatal DA response to alcohol is only in part driven by direct pharmacological actions of alcohol, while an additional component of the activation is evoked by smell or taste cues.
