Contextual cues facilitate dynamic value encoding in the mesolimbic dopamine system.

ABSTRACT: Adaptive behavior in a dynamic environmental context often requires rapid revaluation of stimuli that deviates from well-learned associations. The divergence between stable value-encoding and appropriate behavioral output remains a critical component of theories of dopamine's function in learning, motivation, and motor control. Yet, how dopamine neurons are involved in the revaluation of cues when the world changes, to alter our behavior, remains unclear. Here, we make use of a complementary set of in vivo approaches to clarify the contributions of the mesolimbic dopamine system to the dynamic reorganization of reward- seeking behavior. Male and female rats were trained to discriminate when a conditioned stimulus would be followed by a sucrose reward by exploiting the prior, non-overlappin

SUBMITTER: Fraser KM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11859769 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature