ArticleNature human behaviour2020
Dissociating neural learning signals in human sign- and goal-trackers.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers.
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Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed, 80 citations in OpenAlex.
- Reproducible human reward imaging phenotypes exhibit differential sensitivity to dopamine D2 receptor antagonism.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Can the incentive-sensitization theory of addiction incorporate addiction to opioid drugs?Psychopharmacology · 2026Review
- The role of affective learning biases in daily food behaviour.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Article
- The effects of reward uncertainty and alcohol intoxication on human sign- and goal-tracking.Psychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Reduced Pavlovian Value Updating Alters Decision-Making in Sign-Trackers.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Test-retest reliability of the gaze index for sign-tracking and goal-tracking.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- When cues take the wheel: cue-control across alcohol use disorder, binge-eating disorder, gambling disorder, and internet gaming disorder.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Motivation, attention, and uncertainty: insights from animal and human research and implications for addiction.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Sign- vs. goal-tracking is associated with greater adiposity and altered functional connectivity in response to a naturalistic food paradigm.Physiology & behavior · 2025Article
- Genotype-dependent functional role of the anterior and posterior paraventricular thalamus in pavlovian conditioned approach.Psychopharmacology · 2025Article
- The effect of reward and punishment on the extinction of attentional capture elicited by value-related stimuli.Psychological research · 2025Article
- Measuring Human Pavlovian Reward Conditioning and Memory Retention After Consolidation.Psychophysiology · 2025Article
- Pavlovian impatience: The anticipation of immediate rewards increases approach behaviour.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Article
- The Continuing Challenges of Studying Parallel Behaviours in Humans and Animal Models.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2025Review
- Cortico-striatal action control inherent of opponent cognitive-motivational styles.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Resting-state brain activation patterns and network topology distinguish human sign and goal trackers.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
- Leveraging individual differences in cue-reward learning to investigate the psychological and neural basis of shared psychiatric symptomatology: The sign-tracker/goal-tracker model.Behavioral neuroscience · 2024Review
- High stakes slow responding, but do not help overcome Pavlovian biases in humans.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
20 authors at 9 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Individuals differ in how they learn from experience. In Pavlovian conditioning models, where cues predict reinforcer delivery at a different goal location, some animals-called sign-trackers-come to approach the cue, whereas others, called goal-trackers, approach the goal. In sign-trackers, model-free phasic dopaminergic reward-prediction errors underlie learning, which renders stimuli 'wanted'. Goal-trackers do not rely on dopamine for learning and are thought to use model-based learning. We demonstrate this double dissociation in 129 male humans using eye-tracking, pupillometry and functional magnetic resonance imaging informed by computational models of sign- and goal-tracking. We show that sign-trackers exhibit a neural reward prediction error signal that is not detectable in goal-trackers. Model-free value only guides gaze and pupil dilation in sign-trackers. Goal-trackers instead exhibit a stronger model-based neural state prediction error signal. This model-based construct determines gaze and pupil dilation more in goal-trackers.
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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.