Dopamine-independent effect of rewards on choices through hidden-state inference.

ABSTRACT: Dopamine is implicated in adaptive behavior through reward prediction error (RPE) signals that update value estimates. There is also accumulating evidence that animals in structured environments can use inference processes to facilitate behavioral flexibility. However, it is unclear how these two accounts of reward-guided decision-making should be integrated. Using a two-step task for mice, we show that dopamine reports RPEs using value information inferred from task structure knowledge, alongside information about reward rate and movement. Nonetheless, although rewards strongly influenced choices and dopamine activity, neither activating nor inhibiting dopamine neurons at trial outcome affected future choice. These data were recapitulated by a neural network model where cortex learned to

SUBMITTER: Blanco-Pozo M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10849965 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature