Dopamine-associated cached values are not sufficient as the basis for action selection.

ABSTRACT: Phasic dopamine transmission is posited to act as a critical teaching signal that updates the stored (or "cached") values assigned to reward-predictive stimuli and actions. It is widely hypothesized that these cached values determine the selection among multiple courses of action, a premise that has provided a foundation for contemporary theories of decision making. In the current work we used fast-scan cyclic voltammetry to probe dopamine-associated cached values from cue-evoked dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens of rats performing cost-benefit decision-making paradigms to evaluate critically the relationship between dopamine-associated cached values and preferences. By manipulating the amount of effort required to obtain rewards of different sizes, we were able to bias rats toward

SUBMITTER: Hollon NG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4280640 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature