ArticleCurrent biology : CB2014
Reward contexts extend dopamine signals to unrewarded stimuli.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 35 papers.
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
35 citing papers in PubMed.
- Conditioned accumbal dopamine transients forecast individual preference for drug versus natural rewards and compulsive behavior.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Striatal Gradient in Value-Decay Explains Regional Differences in Dopamine Patterns and Reinforcement Learning Computations.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Striatal dopamine signals errors in prediction across different informational domains.Science advances · 2025Article
- Early Salience Signals Predict Interindividual Asymmetry in Decision Accuracy Across Rewarding and Punishing Contexts.Human brain mapping · 2024Article
- Explaining dopamine through prediction errors and beyond.Nature neuroscience · 2024Review
- A dopamine mechanism for reward maximization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Role of dopamine D1 receptor in the modulation of memory consolidation by passive and self-administered heroin and associated conditioned stimuli.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Environmental context-dependent activation of dopamine neurons via putative amygdala-nigra pathway in macaques.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Article
- A gradual temporal shift of dopamine responses mirrors the progression of temporal difference error in machine learning.Nature neuroscience · 2022Article
- Digital Addiction and Sleep.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Review
- Article
- Signals of anticipation of reward and of mean reward rates in the human brain.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Believing in dopamine.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2019Review
- Context learning before birth: evidence from the chick embryo.Biology letters · 2019Article
- Recent advances in understanding the role of phasic dopamine activity.F1000Research · 2019Review
- Previously rewarding environments enhance incidental memory formation.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2018Article
- Cortical visual processing evokes short-latency reward-predicting cue responses in primate midbrain dopamine neurons.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- The biological and behavioral computations that influence dopamine responses.Current opinion in neurobiology · 2018Review
- Reward and value coding by dopamine neurons in non-human primates.Journal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996) · 2018Review
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Basic tenets of sensory processing emphasize the importance of accurate identification and discrimination of environmental objects [1]. Although this principle holds also for reward, the crucial acquisition of reward for survival would be aided by the capacity to detect objects whose rewarding properties may not be immediately apparent. Animal learning theory conceptualizes how unrewarded stimuli induce behavioral reactions in rewarded contexts due to pseudoconditioning and higher-order context conditioning [2-6]. We hypothesized that the underlying mechanisms may involve context-sensitive reward neurons. We studied short-latency activations of dopamine neurons to unrewarded, physically salient stimuli while systematically changing reward context. Dopamine neurons showed substantial activations to unrewarded stimuli and their conditioned stimuli in highly rewarded contexts. The activations decreased and often disappeared entirely with stepwise separation from rewarded contexts. The influence of reward context suggests that dopamine neurons respond to real and potential reward. The influence of reward context is compatible with the reward nature of phasic dopamine responses. The responses may facilitate rapid, default initiation of behavioral reactions in environments usually containing reward. Agents would encounter more and miss less reward, resulting in survival advantage and enhanced evolutionary fitness.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.