Neural circuits linking sleep and addiction: Animal models to understand why select individuals are more vulnerable to substance use disorders after sleep deprivation

•There is individual variation in the effects of sleep loss on reward circuitry.•This individual variation has been difficult to study in preclinical animal models.•There exists a Sign/Goal Tracker model of individual differences in cued motivation.•There is overlapping circuitry responsible for both sleep and ST/GT behavior.•ST/GT model can be used to study individual variation in sleep-reward interactions.