Current Views of Hypothalamic Contributions to the Control of Motivated Behaviors

The increasing availability of technologies for interrogating genetically targeted neurons is driving a resurgence of empirical research aimed at determining the structure and function of the neural systems that control motivated behaviors. This has refocused attention on the hypothalamus, whose central role in behavioral control was identified about a century ago. As a result, new insights into hypothalamic contributions to the control of motivated behaviors are emerging, driven not only by the application of new technologies, but also by the application in parallel of iteratively refined established techniques, and increasingly by informatics approaches applied to maturing neuroscience databases. With this renewed interest in decrypting hypothalamic contributions to the control of motivated behaviors, it is timely to provide an updated overview that bridges current insights and historical foundations.