How does a particular smell or taste guide current and future behavior? New electrophysiological and pharmacological tools and sophisticated behavioral paradigms allow the exploration of the role of cognition and learning in goal-directed behavior. Janak will introduce the panel with a review of the anatomy and a presentation of the issues. Kelley will address how taste cues, particularly conditioned taste cues, influence behavior, with an emphasis on opioid mechanisms of the accumbens shell. Anstrom will provide electrophysiological evidence for reinforcer-specific neural coding obtained from rats self-administering differently-flavored solutions, including ethanol, within n.accumbens and two of its important afferents, the lateral insular and medial prefrontal cortical regions. Schoenbaum will continue the exploration of prefrontal cortex, by providing evidence from olfactory learning that the orbitofrontal cortex and the basolateral amygdala may form a 'working memory' system for encoding the motivational value of cues. Together, these talks will provide the springboard for a discussion on the notion that the mesocorticolimbic system is the neural substrate for conditioned chemosensory stimulus effects on goal-directed behavior.