Scientists Discover Area of Brain Responsible for Exercise Motivation Scientists at Seattle Children’s Research Institute have discovered an area of the brain that could control a person’s motivation to exercise and participate in other rewarding activities – potentially leading to improved treatments for depression. The research is in Journal of Neuroscience. (full access paywall) Research: “Role of the Dorsal Medial Habenula in the Regulation of Voluntary Activity, Motor Function, Hedonic State, and Primary Reinforcement” by Yun-Wei A. Hsu, Si D. Wang, Shirong Wang, Glenn Morton, Hatim A. Zariwala, Horacio O. de la Iglesia, and Eric E. Turner in Journal of Neuroscience. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1861-14.2014 Image: Past studies have attributed many different functions to the habenula, but technology was not advanced enough to determine roles of the various subsections of this area of the brain, including the dorsal medial habenula. This image is for illustrative purposes only. The image shows the habenula region from a D2-eGFP (green) transgenic mouse stained for calbindin (red) and DAPI (blue) to show nuclei. Credit NIH. #neuroscience