Publication Date:
2009-03-17
Description:
The brain's sensitivity to unexpected outcomes plays a fundamental role in an organism's ability to adapt and learn new behaviors. Emerging research suggests that midbrain dopaminergic neurons encode these unexpected outcomes. We used microelectrode recordings during deep brain stimulation surgery to study neuronal activity in the human substantia nigra (SN) while patients with Parkinson's disease engaged in a probabilistic learning task motivated by virtual financial rewards. Based on a model of the participants' expected reward, we divided trial outcomes into expected and unexpected gains and losses. SN neurons exhibited significantly higher firing rates after unexpected gains than unexpected losses. No such differences were observed after expected gains and losses. This result provides critical support for the hypothesized role of the SN in human reinforcement learning.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2839450/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉 〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2839450/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Zaghloul, Kareem A -- Blanco, Justin A -- Weidemann, Christoph T -- McGill, Kathryn -- Jaggi, Jurg L -- Baltuch, Gordon H -- Kahana, Michael J -- MH062196/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- MH61975/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- P50 MH062196/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- P50 MH062196-090008/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- R01 MH061975/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- R01 MH061975-08/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/ -- R01 NS048598/NS/NINDS NIH HHS/ -- R01 NS048598-04/NS/NINDS NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2009 Mar 13;323(5920):1496-9. doi: 10.1126/science.1167342.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Neurosurgery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. zaghlouk@uphs.upenn.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19286561" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Action Potentials
;
Deep Brain Stimulation
;
Dopamine/physiology
;
Economics
;
*Feedback, Psychological
;
Female
;
Humans
;
*Learning
;
Male
;
Microelectrodes
;
Middle Aged
;
Models, Psychological
;
Neurons/*physiology
;
Parkinson Disease/physiopathology/therapy
;
Probability
;
Reinforcement (Psychology)
;
*Reward
;
Substantia Nigra/cytology/*physiology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
