ArticleNature2015
Arithmetic and local circuitry underlying dopamine prediction errors.
Article in Nature, 2015. 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 214 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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
214 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 421 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Hyperdopaminergic States Bias Explorations-Exploitation Trade-Off in Foraging and Impair Survival.The European journal of neuroscience · 2026Article
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- A shared predictive architecture in the sensory cortex for statistical and reward-based learning.Current opinion in neurobiology · 2026Review
- Superior colliculus modulates the compulsion in a model of addiction with foot-shock.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) Acutely Exposed to Mouse Ventral Tegmental Area IJournal of neurochemistry · 2026Article
- Disinhibition of ventral tegmental area during initial punishment learning causes enduring punishment insensitivity.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
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- Phasic dopamine drives conditioned responding beyond its role in learning.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Functional imaging of time on task and the involvement of dopaminergic and cholinergic substrates in cognitive effort and reward.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Dopaminergic responses to identity prediction errors depend differently on the orbitofrontal cortex and hippocampus.Behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- The representation of omitted sounds in the mouse auditory cortex.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Reduced striatal dopamine transmission as a transdiagnostic substrate of psychomotor retardation.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2026Review
- Leveraging insights from neuroscience to build adaptive artificial intelligence.Nature neuroscience · 2026Review
- A brief history of dopamine prediction errors.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2026Review
- Multisystem regulation of reward and addiction: beyond the dopaminergic system.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2026Review
- Medial prefrontal cortex activity precedes dorsomedial striatum in need for change during history-based flexible behavior.iScience · 2025Article
- Dynamic changes in chloride homeostasis coordinate midbrain inhibitory network activity during reward learning.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Ventral tegmental area GABA neurons integrate positive and negative valence.Nature communications · 2025Article
154 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Dopamine neurons are thought to facilitate learning by comparing actual and expected reward. Despite two decades of investigation, little is known about how this comparison is made. To determine how dopamine neurons calculate prediction error, we combined optogenetic manipulations with extracellular recordings in the ventral tegmental area while mice engaged in classical conditioning. Here we demonstrate, by manipulating the temporal expectation of reward, that dopamine neurons perform subtraction, a computation that is ideal for reinforcement learning but rarely observed in the brain. Furthermore, selectively exciting and inhibiting neighbouring GABA (γ-aminobutyric acid) neurons in the ventral tegmental area reveals that these neurons are a source of subtraction: they inhibit dopamine neurons when reward is expected, causally contributing to prediction-error calculations. Finally, bilaterally stimulating ventral tegmental area GABA neurons dramatically reduces anticipatory licking to conditioned odours, consistent with an important role for these neurons in reinforcement learning. Together, our results uncover the arithmetic and local circuitry underlying dopamine prediction errors.
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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.