ArticleNature neuroscience2018
Dopamine neurons projecting to the posterior striatum reinforce avoidance of threatening stimuli.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 209 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
209 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Meta-analysis of human prediction error for incentives, perception, cognition, and action.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Pooled it
- Dopamine manipulations modulate paranoid social inferences in healthy people.Translational psychiatry · 2020Trial
- Auditory associative learning drives synaptic responses in tail of the striatum spiny projection neurons.iScience · 2026Article
- Region-specific weighting of sensory intensity and reward prediction error by dopamine signals.iScience · 2026Article
- Amygdalostriatal transition zone neurons encode sustained cue responses to guide defensive behaviors.Neuron · 2026Article
- Anabolic androgenic steroids induce distinct monoaminergic and lipidomic alterations in the male rat brain.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Diverging influences of punishment motivation and negative affect on cognitive control.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Dopamine dynamics as a regulatory mechanism for shifting between defensive and reward-seeking behaviors.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Neural basis of social hierarchy across species.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Long-term Learning Induces Plastic Changes in Frontostriatal Circuits.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Prediction error correlates in the striosome-dopamine circuit emerge from information gain.Nature communications · 2026Article
- POINTseq: Cell-type-specific barcoding reveals single-cell projection architecture of the mouse dopaminergic system.Neuron · 2026Article
- Complementary influences of noradrenaline and dopamine in orchestrating a motivated social behavior.Current opinion in neurobiology · 2026Review
- Temporal cortex astrocytic Gi-GPCR signaling regulates learned threat responses.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Learning shapes neural codes for sensory-motor integration in the tail of the striatum.bioRxiv : the preprint server for 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
- Mesocorticostriatal Reinforcement Learning of State Representation and Value with Implications for the Mechanisms of Schizophrenia.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Cell type-specific barcoding reveals the single-neuron projectional architecture of the mouse midbrain dopaminergic system.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Article
149 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Midbrain dopamine neurons are well known for their role in reward-based reinforcement learning. We found that the activity of dopamine axons in the posterior tail of the striatum (TS) scaled with the novelty and intensity of external stimuli, but did not encode reward value. We demonstrated that the ablation of TS-projecting dopamine neurons specifically inhibited avoidance of novel or high-intensity stimuli without affecting animals' initial avoidance responses, suggesting a role in reinforcement rather than simply in avoidance itself. Furthermore, we found that animals avoided optogenetic activation of dopamine axons in TS during a choice task and that this stimulation could partially reinstate avoidance of a familiar object. These results suggest that TS-projecting dopamine neurons reinforce avoidance of threatening stimuli. More generally, our results indicate that there are at least two axes of reinforcement learning using dopamine in the striatum: one based on value and one based on external threat.
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.