Seeking motivation and reward: Roles of dopamine, hippocampus, and supramammillo-septal pathway
Still using the concept of “reward”, but it brings up interesting questions about how brains bind valence scoring on top of brain stem salience signals. Also:
The cognitive aspect of information-seeking behavior, including the perception of salience and uncertainty, involves, in part, the pathways from the posterior hypothalamic supramammillary region to the hippocampal formation. The vigor of such behavior is modulated by the following: supramammillary glutamatergic neurons; their projections to medial septal glutamatergic neurons; and the projections of medial septal glutamatergic neurons to ventral tegmental dopaminergic neurons.
Gee, I wonder which pathway is dominant in my brain. See: “autism” and the hippocampal CA2 region.