ArticleNature neuroscience2022
A gradual temporal shift of dopamine responses mirrors the progression of temporal difference error in machine learning.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 55 papers.
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Who cites it
55 citing papers in PubMed.
- Dopamine release-associated striatal blood oxygenation and whole-brain dynamics during associative learning.Science advances · 2026Article
- Conditioned accumbal dopamine transients forecast individual preference for drug versus natural rewards and compulsive behavior.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Dopamine dynamics as a regulatory mechanism for shifting between defensive and reward-seeking behaviors.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Striatal Dopamine at Learned Sequence Boundaries Sustains Birdsong.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- 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
- Article
- Duration between rewards controls the rate of behavioral and dopaminergic learning.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Phasic dopamine drives conditioned responding beyond its role in learning.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Predictive coding of reward in the hippocampus.Nature · 2026Article
- Consensus Paper: Models of Cerebellar Functions.Cerebellum (London, England) · 2026Review
- Dopamine signatures of excessive and compulsive cocaine and fentanyl use.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Reconciling time and prediction error theories of associative learning.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Trial-by-trial learning of successor representations in human behavior.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Trial-by-trial learning of successor representations in human behavior.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- A hardwired neural circuit for temporal difference learning.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Flexible value coding in the mesolimbic dopamine system depending on internal water and sodium balance.NPJ science of food · 2025Article
- Individual differences in decision-making shape how mesolimbic dopamine regulates choice confidence and change-of-mind.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
- Tonic dopamine and biases in value learning linked through a biologically inspired reinforcement learning model.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Prospective contingency explains behavior and dopamine signals during associative learning.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
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6 authors.
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Abstract
A large body of evidence has indicated that the phasic responses of midbrain dopamine neurons show a remarkable similarity to a type of teaching signal (temporal difference (TD) error) used in machine learning. However, previous studies failed to observe a key prediction of this algorithm: that when an agent associates a cue and a reward that are separated in time, the timing of dopamine signals should gradually move backward in time from the time of the reward to the time of the cue over multiple trials. Here we demonstrate that such a gradual shift occurs both at the level of dopaminergic cellular activity and dopamine release in the ventral striatum in mice. Our results establish a long-sought link between dopaminergic activity and the TD learning algorithm, providing fundamental insights into how the brain associates cues and rewards that are separated in time.
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