{"id":215791,"date":"2025-06-12T06:20:31","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T11:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/neural-maps-used-to-locate-rewards-may-be-disrupted-in-dementia-and-heightened-in-addiction"},"modified":"2025-06-12T06:20:31","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T11:20:31","slug":"neural-maps-used-to-locate-rewards-may-be-disrupted-in-dementia-and-heightened-in-addiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/neural-maps-used-to-locate-rewards-may-be-disrupted-in-dementia-and-heightened-in-addiction","title":{"rendered":"Neural maps used to locate rewards may be disrupted in dementia and heightened in addiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/neural-maps-used-to-locate-rewards-may-be-disrupted-in-dementia-and-heightened-in-addiction2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Imagine you\u2019re walking to work when the unspeakable occurs: Your favorite coffee shop\u2014where you stop every day\u2014is closed. You groggily navigate to a newly opened coffee shop a couple blocks away, which, you\u2019re pleased to discover, actually makes quite a good morning brew. Soon, you find yourself looking forward to stopping at the new location instead of the old one.<\/p>\n<p>That switch probably alters more than just your morning routine. Each time you visit that new coffee shop, the experience likely strengthens a neural map marking the positions of rewarding experiences\u2014a map that can guide you back to those experiences even from miles away.<\/p>\n<p>While the existence of a reward map is familiar from previous work, Wu Tsai Neuro researchers working with <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/mice\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">mice<\/a> were surprised to find that the map persists even when mice move many meters away from a treat, and that it updates almost immediately when the <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/location\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">location<\/a> of the treat changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imagine you\u2019re walking to work when the unspeakable occurs: Your favorite coffee shop\u2014where you stop every day\u2014is closed. You groggily navigate to a newly opened coffee shop a couple blocks away, which, you\u2019re pleased to discover, actually makes quite a good morning brew. Soon, you find yourself looking forward to stopping at the new location [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1965,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mapping","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}