ArticleeLife2016
Midbrain dopamine neurons signal aversion in a reward-context-dependent manner.
Article in eLife, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 71 papers.
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Who cites it
71 citing papers in PubMed.
- Dopamine dynamics as a regulatory mechanism for shifting between defensive and reward-seeking behaviors.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Dopamine in the ventral and tail of striatum supports global and local evaluation in reward-threat conflict.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Punishments Enhance Reward Learning by Modulating Striatal Prediction Errors.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Phasic dopamine drives conditioned responding beyond its role in learning.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Stress resilience is associated with transcriptional remodeling in the VTA.Cell reports · 2026Article
- Recruitment of specific dopamine neuron sub-circuits by opioids.Addiction neuroscience · 2025Article
- Stress resilience is associated with transcriptional remodeling in the VTA.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- 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
- From avoidance to new action: the multifaceted role of the striatal indirect pathway.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2025Review
- Article
- Dopamine in the tail of the striatum facilitates avoidance in threat-reward conflicts.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
- Acetylcholine modulates prefrontal outcome coding during threat learning under uncertainty.eLife · 2025Article
- Interpretable deep learning for deconvolutional analysis of neural signals.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Bidirectional valence coding in amygdala intercalated clusters: A neural substrate for the opponent-process theory of motivation.Neuroscience research · 2024Article
- Dopamine neurons encode trial-by-trial subjective reward value in an auction-like task.Nature communications · 2024Article
- A feature-specific prediction error model explains dopaminergic heterogeneity.Nature neuroscience · 2024Article
- Natural phasic inhibition of dopamine neurons signals cognitive rigidity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Dopamine neurons encode trial-by-trial subjective reward value in an auction-like task.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Asymmetric coding of reward prediction errors in human insula and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Subsecond fluctuations in extracellular dopamine encode reward and punishment prediction errors in humans.Science advances · 2023Article
11 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Dopamine is thought to regulate learning from appetitive and aversive events. Here we examined how optogenetically-identified dopamine neurons in the lateral ventral tegmental area of mice respond to aversive events in different conditions. In low reward contexts, most dopamine neurons were exclusively inhibited by aversive events, and expectation reduced dopamine neurons' responses to reward and punishment. When a single odor predicted both reward and punishment, dopamine neurons' responses to that odor reflected the integrated value of both outcomes. Thus, in low reward contexts, dopamine neurons signal value prediction errors (VPEs) integrating information about both reward and aversion in a common currency. In contrast, in high reward contexts, dopamine neurons acquired a short-latency excitation to aversive events that masked their VPE signaling. Our results demonstrate the importance of considering the contexts to examine the representation in dopamine neurons and uncover different modes of dopamine signaling, each of which may be adaptive for different environments.
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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.