ArticleNature communications2020
Dopamine transients do not act as model-free prediction errors during associative learning.
Article in Nature communications, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 49 papers.
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Who cites it
49 citing papers in PubMed.
- Probing biomarkers and clinical utility of reward learning across species using the Probabilistic Reward Task: 20 years of findings.Nature. Mental health · 2026Article
- Prediction error correlates in the striosome-dopamine circuit emerge from information gain.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Methamphetamine potentiates the use of outcome-specific associations via a hypothalamic-dopamine circuit.Neuron · 2026Article
- Disinhibition of ventral tegmental area during initial punishment learning causes enduring punishment insensitivity.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Duration between rewards controls the rate of behavioral and dopaminergic learning.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Building Goal-Directed Cognitive Graphs.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Refining mechanistic models of hallucinations for enhanced translatability.Translational psychiatry · 2025Review
- Estrogen modulates reward prediction errors and reinforcement learning.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
- Post-learning replay of hippocampal-striatal activity is biased by reward-prediction signals.Nature communications · 2025Article
- 20 Years of Aberrant Salience in Psychosis: What Have We Learned?The American journal of psychiatry · 2025Review
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- Differentiating Reinforcement Learning and Episodic Memory in Value-Based Decisions in Parkinson's Disease.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Mesolimbic dopamine ramps reflect environmental timescales.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Schemas, reinforcement learning and the medial prefrontal cortex.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2025Review
- Contextual cues facilitate dynamic value encoding in the mesolimbic dopamine system.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- Complementary roles of serotonin and dopamine in model-based learning.Current opinion in behavioral sciences · 2025Article
- Dopamine Release in the Nucleus Accumbens Core Encodes the General Excitatory Components of Learning.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Value-Driven Adaptations of Mesolimbic Dopamine Release Are Governed by Both Model-Based and Model-Free Mechanisms.eNeuro · 2024Article
- Cognitive representations of intracranial self-stimulation of midbrain dopamine neurons depend on stimulation frequency.Nature neuroscience · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Dopamine neurons are proposed to signal the reward prediction error in model-free reinforcement learning algorithms. This term represents the unpredicted or 'excess' value of the rewarding event, value that is then added to the intrinsic value of any antecedent cues, contexts or events. To support this proposal, proponents cite evidence that artificially-induced dopamine transients cause lasting changes in behavior. Yet these studies do not generally assess learning under conditions where an endogenous prediction error would occur. Here, to address this, we conducted three experiments where we optogenetically activated dopamine neurons while rats were learning associative relationships, both with and without reward. In each experiment, the antecedent cues failed to acquire value and instead entered into associations with the later events, whether valueless cues or valued rewards. These results show that in learning situations appropriate for the appearance of a prediction error, dopamine transients support associative, rather than model-free, learning.
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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.