ABSTRACT
“Animals initiate movements and actions to procure food, to escape predators, to seek shelter, movements and actions that contribute to biological adaptation and survival.” The motivation-motor systems interaction model is composed of elements of both the limbic and motor systems. This chapter deals with ventral tegmental area projections to the striatum and nucleus accumbens (NAc), structures of the motor and motivation systems. The elements of the motivation system are connected sequentially and, in some cases, reciprocally, to one another. The NAc is a nuclear region ventral to the head of the caudate nucleus without an intervening anatomically distinguishable border. An important role of the NAc in the motivation system is transducing a variety of afferent signals into an output which brings about locomotor activity. Autism is characterized by movement and gait abnormalities. The chapter shows that basic fibrocyte growth factor doubles the number of surviving cholinergic mesopontine neurons in neuronal cell cultures.
