Dopamine firing plays a dual role in coding reward prediction errors and signaling motivation in a working memory task.

ABSTRACT: Little is known about how dopamine (DA) neuron firing rates behave in cognitively demanding decision-making tasks. Here, we investigated midbrain DA activity in monkeys performing a discrimination task in which the animal had to use working memory (WM) to report which of two sequentially applied vibrotactile stimuli had the higher frequency. We found that perception was altered by an internal bias, likely generated by deterioration of the representation of the first frequency during the WM period. This bias greatly controlled the DA phasic response during the two stimulation periods, confirming that DA reward prediction errors reflected stimulus perception. In contrast, tonic dopamine activity during WM was not affected by the bias and did not encode the stored frequency. More interestingl

SUBMITTER: Sarno S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8764687 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature