A fundamental task faced by the brain is to extract context-sensitive meaning from ambiguous stimuli. For instance, the word “shot” carries a different meaning in a bar vs. a vaccine clinic. The neural circuits underlying the contextual regulation of motivated behaviors has long remained elusive. The Keiflin lab, in a recent paper published in the journal Current Biology, has shed new light on this long-standing problem, using cutting-edge chemogenetic techniques to selectively turn off different brain regions. For more information, see the UCSB Current, and visit the Keiflin Lab page.