Cue-Evoked Dopamine Neuron Activity Helps Maintain but Does Not Encode Expected Value

• DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2019.09.077
• Publication Date: 2019-11-05T10:57:52Z
• Authors: Jesse A. Mendoza; Christopher K. La...; Angela K. Yang; Jonathan P. Britt
• Keywords: Lever; Value (mathematics)

Cue-evoked midbrain dopamine (DA) neuron activity reflects expected value, but its influence on reward assessment is unclear. In mice performing a trial-based operant task, we test if bidirectional manipulations of cue or operant-associated DA drive learning as result under- overexpectation value. We target optogenetic to different components forced trials, when only one lever presented, and assess biases choice trials in the absence photomanipulation. Although are demonstrated be flexible sensitive changes augmentation signaling does not significantly alter behavior, blunting during any component reduces trial responses associated lever. These data suggest cue-evoked helps maintain cue-value associations encode value set benchmark against which received judged.