Figure 4: Below is a 15-s video of a rat in an operant box when the lights unexpectedly go out. On the bottom of the screen, the dopamine signal from the ventral striatum of that rat scrolls on in real-time with the video. At first, the rat is awake but relatively inactive.
Next, the lights go off and a white noise stops (note that there is no audio on this video). These events are immediately followed by a dopamine transient in the ventral striatum of the rat and increased locomotor behavior.
Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill