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REVIEW article

Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Neuroendocrine Science
Volume 18 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1437210
This article is part of the Research Topic Neurobiology of Food Intake, Exercise Motivation, and Energy Balance View all articles

The nucleus accumbens shell: a neural hub at the interface of homeostatic and hedonic feeding

Provisionally accepted
Alina-Măriuca Marinescu Alina-Măriuca Marinescu 1*Marie A. Labouesse Marie A. Labouesse 1,2*
  • 1 Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
  • 2 Center for Neuroscience Zurich, University of Zurich, Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Feeding behavior is a complex physiological process regulated by the interplay between homeostatic and hedonic feeding circuits. Among the neural structures involved, the nucleus accumbens (NAc) has emerged as a pivotal region at the interface of these two circuits. The NAc comprises distinct subregions and in this review, we focus mainly on the NAc shell (NAcSh). Homeostatic feeding circuits, primarily found in the hypothalamus, ensure the organism's balance in energy and nutrient requirements. These circuits monitor peripheral signals, such as insulin, leptin, and ghrelin, and modulate satiety and hunger states. The NAcSh receives input from these homeostatic circuits, integrating information regarding the organism's metabolic needs. Conversely, so-called hedonic feeding circuits involve all other non-hunger and -satiety processes, i.e. the sensory information, associative learning, reward, motivation and pleasure associated with food consumption. The NAcSh is interconnected with hedonics-related structures like the ventral tegmental area and prefrontal cortex and plays a key role in encoding hedonic information related to palatable food seeking or consumption. In sum, the NAcSh acts as a crucial hub in feeding behavior, integrating signals from both homeostatic and hedonic circuits, to facilitate behavioral output via its downstream projections. Moreover, the NAcSh's involvement extends beyond simple integration, as it directly impacts actions related to food consumption. In this review, we first focus on delineating the inputs targeting the NAcSh; we then present NAcSh output projections to downstream structures. Finally we discuss how the NAcSh regulates feeding behavior and can be seen as a neural hub integrating homeostatic and hedonic feeding signals, via a functionally diverse set of projection neuron subpopulations.

    Keywords: dopamine1, food intake2, hedonic feeding3, homeostatic feeding4, neural circuits5, nucleus accumbens6, nucleus accumbens shell7, reward8

    Received: 23 May 2024; Accepted: 16 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Marinescu and Labouesse. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Alina-Măriuca Marinescu, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
    Marie A. Labouesse, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.