Dopamine blockade impairs the exploration-exploitation trade-off in rats.

ABSTRACT: In a volatile environment where rewards are uncertain, successful performance requires a delicate balance between exploitation of the best option and exploration of alternative choices. It has theoretically been proposed that dopamine contributes to the control of this exploration-exploitation trade-off, specifically that the higher the level of tonic dopamine, the more exploitation is favored. We demonstrate here that there is a formal relationship between the rescaling of dopamine positive reward prediction errors and the exploration-exploitation trade-off in simple non-stationary multi-armed bandit tasks. We further show in rats performing such a task that systemically antagonizing dopamine receptors greatly increases the number of random choices without affecting learning capacities. S

SUBMITTER: Cinotti F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6494917 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature