Trial reportThe European journal of neuroscience2012
How much of reinforcement learning is working memory, not reinforcement learning? A behavioral, computational, and neurogenetic analysis.
Trial report in The European journal of neuroscience, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 216 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
216 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- COMT Val(158) Met genotype is associated with reward learning: a replication study and meta-analysis.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2016Pooled it
- Reinforcement learning models and their neural correlates: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2015Pooled it
- Methamphetamine-induced adaptation of learning rate dynamics depend on baseline performance.eLife · 2025Trial
- Depression Severity Moderates Reward Learning Among Smokers With Current or Past Major Depressive Disorder in a Smoking Cessation Randomized Clinical Trial.Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco · 2024Trial
- Effects of methylphenidate on reinforcement learning depend on working memory capacity.Psychopharmacology · 2021Trial
- Beliefs about Others' Abilities Alter Learning from Observation.Scientific reports · 2017Trial
- Modeling decision dynamics disentangles working memory, cognitive control and reinforcement learning and reveals clinical differences.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Bridging the divide in motor learning research.Nature human behaviour · 2026Review
- Human curriculum learning of a cue combination task.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Foraging models explain human exploration in uncertain tasks.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Compressive learning scaffolds higher-order network structure to enhance human knowledge acquisition.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Discovery of Small Molecule Ligands Targeting Orphan G Protein-Coupled Receptors GPR3, GPR6, and GPR12.Journal of medicinal chemistry · 2026Review
- The Brain Signature of Reward Processing During Cooperative Gaming.Psychophysiology · 2026Article
- Disinformation elicits learning biases.eLife · 2026Article
- Attention and learning strategies reveal distinct dimensions of psychiatric diseases.Research square · 2026Article
- Reference-point dependent reinforcement learning in humans and rats.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Selective removal of visual working memory items at test.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Hypothesis testing governs strategic motor learning.NPJ science of learning · 2026Article
- Hybrid neural-cognitive models reveal how memory shapes human reward learning.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
156 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Instrumental learning involves corticostriatal circuitry and the dopaminergic system. This system is typically modeled in the reinforcement learning (RL) framework by incrementally accumulating reward values of states and actions. However, human learning also implicates prefrontal cortical mechanisms involved in higher level cognitive functions. The interaction of these systems remains poorly understood, and models of human behavior often ignore working memory (WM) and therefore incorrectly assign behavioral variance to the RL system. Here we designed a task that highlights the profound entanglement of these two processes, even in simple learning problems. By systematically varying the size of the learning problem and delay between stimulus repetitions, we separately extracted WM-specific effects of load and delay on learning. We propose a new computational model that accounts for the dynamic integration of RL and WM processes observed in subjects' behavior. Incorporating capacity-limited WM into the model allowed us to capture behavioral variance that could not be captured in a pure RL framework even if we (implausibly) allowed separate RL systems for each set size. The WM component also allowed for a more reasonable estimation of a single RL process. Finally, we report effects of two genetic polymorphisms having relative specificity for prefrontal and basal ganglia functions. Whereas the COMT gene coding for catechol-O-methyl transferase selectively influenced model estimates of WM capacity, the GPR6 gene coding for G-protein-coupled receptor 6 influenced the RL learning rate. Thus, this study allowed us to specify distinct influences of the high-level and low-level cognitive functions on instrumental learning, beyond the possibilities offered by simple RL models.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.