Trial reportPLoS computational biology2016
Catecholaminergic Regulation of Learning Rate in a Dynamic Environment.
Trial report in PLoS computational biology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers.
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
42 citing papers in PubMed, 107 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pharmacological and pupillary evidence for the noradrenergic contribution to reinforcement learning in Parkinson's disease.Communications biology · 2025Trial
- Noradrenergic deficits contribute to apathy in Parkinson's disease through the precision of expected outcomes.PLoS computational biology · 2022Trial
- The Computational, Pharmacological, and Physiological Determinants of Sensory Learning under Uncertainty.Current biology : CB · 2021Trial
- Baseline-dependent effect of dopamine's precursor L-tyrosine on working memory gating but not updating.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2020Trial
- Fluctuations in arousal reflect latent state transitions that facilitate behavioural optimization.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Orbitofrontal noradrenaline supports adaptive learning-rate adjustment in probabilistic reversal learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Locus coeruleus-related insula activation supports implicit learning.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- What can ANS signals tell us about motor learning? An implication for better assessment of cognitive contribution to motor learning.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Noradrenergic alpha-2a receptor stimulation enhances prediction error signaling and updating of attention sets in anterior cingulate cortex and striatum.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Toward a computational role for locus coeruleus/norepinephrine arousal systems.Current opinion in behavioral sciences · 2024Article
- Consistency within change: Evaluating the psychometric properties of a widely used predictive-inference task.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
- Enhanced "learning to learn" through a hierarchical dual-learning system: the case of action video game players.BMC psychology · 2024Article
- Influence of surprise on reinforcement learning in younger and older adults.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Prediction-error-dependent processing of immediate and delayed positive feedback.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Adaptive learning from outcome contingencies in eating-disorder risk groups.Translational psychiatry · 2023Article
- Noradrenergic alpha-2a Receptor Stimulation Enhances Prediction Error Signaling in Anterior Cingulate Cortex and Striatum.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- EEG mismatch responses in a multimodal roving stimulus paradigm provide evidence for probabilistic inference across audition, somatosensation, and vision.Human brain mapping · 2023Article
- How uncertain are you? Disentangling expected and unexpected uncertainty in pupil-linked brain arousal during reversal learning.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2023Article
- Anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex oscillations underlie learning alterations in trait anxiety in humans.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 5 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Adaptive behavior in a changing world requires flexibly adapting one's rate of learning to the rate of environmental change. Recent studies have examined the computational mechanisms by which various environmental factors determine the impact of new outcomes on existing beliefs (i.e., the 'learning rate'). However, the brain mechanisms, and in particular the neuromodulators, involved in this process are still largely unknown. The brain-wide neurophysiological effects of the catecholamines norepinephrine and dopamine on stimulus-evoked cortical responses suggest that the catecholamine systems are well positioned to regulate learning about environmental change, but more direct evidence for a role of this system is scant. Here, we report evidence from a study employing pharmacology, scalp electrophysiology and computational modeling (N = 32) that suggests an important role for catecholamines in learning rate regulation. We found that the P3 component of the EEG-an electrophysiological index of outcome-evoked phasic catecholamine release in the cortex-predicted learning rate, and formally mediated the effect of prediction-error magnitude on learning rate. P3 amplitude also mediated the effects of two computational variables-capturing the unexpectedness of an outcome and the uncertainty of a preexisting belief-on learning rate. Furthermore, a pharmacological manipulation of catecholamine activity affected learning rate following unanticipated task changes, in a way that depended on participants' baseline learning rate. Our findings provide converging evidence for a causal role of the human catecholamine systems in learning-rate regulation as a function of environmental change.
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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.