The paraventricular thalamic nucleus (PVT) is highly interconnected with brain areas that control reward-seeking behavior. Despite this known connectivity, broad manipulations of PVT often lead to mixed, and even opposing, behavioral effects, clouding our understanding of how PVT precisely contributes to reward processing. Although the function of PVT in influencing reward-seeking is poorly understood, recent studies show that forebrain and hypothalamic inputs to, and nucleus accumbens (NAc) and amygdalar outputs from, PVT are strongly implicated in PVT responses to conditioned and appetitive or aversive stimuli that determine whether an animal will approach or avoid specific rewards. These studies, which have used an array of chemogenetic, optogenetic, and calcium imaging technologies, have shown that activity in PVT input and output circuits is highly heterogeneous, with mixed activity patterns that contribute to behavior in highly distinct manners. Thus, it is important to perform experiments in precisely defined cell types to elucidate how the PVT network contributes to reward-seeking behaviors. In this review, we describe the complex heterogeneity within PVT circuitry that appears to influence the decision to seek or avoid a reward and point out gaps in our understanding that should be investigated in future studies.

室旁丘脑核（PVT）与控制奖励寻求行为的大脑区域高度关联。尽管存在这种已知的连通性，但对 PVT 的广泛操纵常常会导致混合甚至相反的行为效应，从而模糊了我们对 PVT 如何精确地促进奖励处理的理解。尽管人们对PVT影响寻求奖励的功能知之甚少，但最近的研究表明，前脑和下丘脑的输入以及PVT的伏隔核（NAc）和杏仁核的输出与PVT对条件性、食欲性或厌恶性刺激的反应密切相关。确定动物是否会接近或避免特定的奖励。这些研究使用了一系列化学遗传学、光遗传学和钙成像技术，表明 PVT 输入和输出回路中的活动具有高度异质性，其混合活动模式以高度不同的方式促成行为。因此，在精确定义的细胞类型中进行实验以阐明 PVT 网络如何促进寻求奖励行为非常重要。在这篇综述中，我们描述了 PVT 电路中复杂的异质性，这些异质性似乎会影响寻求或避免奖励的决定，并指出我们理解中的差距，应在未来的研究中进行调查。