Translational Neurotechnology Laboratory, Department of Neurosurgery, Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany.
Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Munich, Germany.
Nat Neurosci. 2024 Apr;27(4):747-757. doi: 10.1038/s41593-023-01567-2. Epub 2024 Jan 30.
Striatal dopamine drives associative learning by acting as a teaching signal. Much work has focused on simple learning paradigms, including Pavlovian and instrumental learning. However, higher cognition requires that animals generate internal concepts of their environment, where sensory stimuli, actions and outcomes become flexibly associated. Here, we performed fiber photometry dopamine measurements across the striatum of male mice as they learned cue-action-outcome associations based on implicit and changing task rules. Reinforcement learning models of the behavioral and dopamine data showed that rule changes lead to adjustments of learned cue-action-outcome associations. After rule changes, mice discarded learned associations and reset outcome expectations. Cue- and outcome-triggered dopamine signals became uncoupled and dependent on the adopted behavioral strategy. As mice learned the new association, coupling between cue- and outcome-triggered dopamine signals and task performance re-emerged. Our results suggest that dopaminergic reward prediction errors reflect an agent's perceived locus of control.
纹状体多巴胺作为一种教学信号，驱动联想学习。大量研究集中在简单的学习范式上，包括条件作用和工具性学习。然而，更高的认知能力要求动物生成对环境的内部概念，其中感官刺激、动作和结果变得灵活关联。在这里，我们在雄性小鼠的纹状体中进行了光纤光度法多巴胺测量，当它们根据隐性和变化的任务规则学习线索-动作-结果关联时。行为和多巴胺数据的强化学习模型表明，规则的改变导致了学习的线索-动作-结果关联的调整。在规则改变后，老鼠丢弃了已习得的关联，并重置了结果预期。线索和结果触发的多巴胺信号解耦，并依赖于所采用的行为策略。当老鼠学习新的关联时，线索和结果触发的多巴胺信号之间的耦合以及任务表现重新出现。我们的结果表明，多巴胺能的奖励预测误差反映了一个主体对控制源的感知。
