Dynamic behaviour restructuring mediates dopamine-dependent credit assignment.

ABSTRACT: Animals exhibit a diverse behavioural repertoire when exploring new environments and can learn which actions or action sequences produce positive outcomes. Dopamine release after encountering a reward is critical for reinforcing reward-producing actions^1-3. However, it has been challenging to understand how credit is assigned to the exact action that produced the dopamine release during continuous behaviour. Here we investigated this problem in mice using a self-stimulation paradigm in which specific spontaneous movements triggered optogenetic stimulation of dopaminergic neurons. Dopamine self-stimulation rapidly and dynamically changes the structure of the entire behavioural repertoire. Initial stimulations reinforced not only the stimulation-producing target action, but also a

SUBMITTER: Tang JCY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10866702 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature