ArticleCurrent biology : CB2019
Ventral Tegmental Dopamine Neurons Participate in Reward Identity Predictions.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 82 papers.
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Who cites it
82 citing papers in PubMed.
- Nitrous oxide controls the DCN to VTA dopamine circuit by enhancing AMPA receptor functions during rewarding behavior.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Sequence termination cues drive automated habit-like strategy via dopamine-mediated processes.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Dopamine dynamics as a regulatory mechanism for shifting between defensive and reward-seeking behaviors.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Prediction error correlates in the striosome-dopamine circuit emerge from information gain.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Dopamine projections to the basolateral amygdala enable reward prediction.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Methamphetamine potentiates the use of outcome-specific associations via a hypothalamic-dopamine circuit.Neuron · 2026Article
- Article
- Dopaminergic responses to identity prediction errors depend differently on the orbitofrontal cortex and hippocampus.Behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Bridging reward and resilience: the endocannabinoid system as a unifying mechanism in exercise-induced protection against major depressive disorder.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Review
- A brief history of dopamine prediction errors.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2026Review
- Post-learning replay of hippocampal-striatal activity is biased by reward-prediction signals.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Ventral tegmental area GABA neurons integrate positive and negative valence.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Superior Colliculus Projections Drive Dopamine Neuron Activity and Movement But Not Value.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Dynamic changes of dopamine neuron activity and plasticity at different stages of negative reinforcement learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Deliberating on the role of dopamine.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2025Article
- Dopamine dynamics during stimulus-reward learning in mice can be explained by performance rather than learning.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Article
- Superior colliculus projections drive dopamine neuron activity and movement but not value.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- The interoceptive origin of reinforcement learning.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2025Review
- 20 Years of Aberrant Salience in Psychosis: What Have We Learned?The American journal of psychiatry · 2025Review
22 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Dopamine (DA) neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and substantia nigra (SNc) encode reward prediction errors (RPEs) and are proposed to mediate error-driven learning. However, the learning strategy engaged by DA-RPEs remains controversial. RPEs might imbue predictive cues with pure value, independently of representations of their associated outcome. Alternatively, RPEs might promote learning about the sensory features (the identity) of the rewarding outcome. Here, we show that, although both VTA and SNc DA neuron activation reinforces instrumental responding, only VTA DA neuron activation during consumption of expected sucrose reward restores error-driven learning and promotes formation of a new cue→sucrose association. Critically, expression of VTA DA-dependent Pavlovian associations is abolished following sucrose devaluation, a signature of identity-based learning. These findings reveal that activation of VTA- or SNc-DA neurons engages largely dissociable learning processes with VTA-DA neurons capable of participating in outcome-specific predictive learning, and the role of SNc-DA neurons appears limited to reinforcement of instrumental responses.
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