Conditioned accumbal dopamine transients forecast individual preference for drug versus natural rewards and compulsive behavior

Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 26 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41593-026-02331-y

Pascoli et al. show that nucleus accumbens dopamine transients evoked by reward-predictive cues encode subjective reward value in mice, predicting individual preference for drugs over natural rewards and forecasting vulnerability to compulsive drug-seeking behavior.