ArticleNature neuroscience2024
A feature-specific prediction error model explains dopaminergic heterogeneity.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 60 papers.
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Who cites it
60 citing papers in PubMed.
- Automatic value learning results in counterproductive human behavior.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Foraging models explain human exploration in uncertain tasks.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Prediction error correlates in the striosome-dopamine circuit emerge from information gain.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Reinventing amlodipine.The Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics · 2026Review
- Dopamine in the ventral and tail of striatum supports global and local evaluation in reward-threat conflict.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Autism-associated learning patterns show reduced credit assignment to outcome-irrelevant features.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
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- Acetylcholine demixes heterogeneous dopamine signals for learning and moving.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Dopaminergic responses to identity prediction errors depend differently on the orbitofrontal cortex and hippocampus.Behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Memory erasure by dopamine-gated retrospective learning.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A computational mechanism linking momentary craving and decision-making in alcohol drinkers and cannabis users.Nature. Mental health · 2026Article
- A brief history of dopamine prediction errors.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2026Review
- Article
- 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
- Ventral tegmental area GABA neurons integrate positive and negative valence.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Article
- 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
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The hypothesis that midbrain dopamine (DA) neurons broadcast a reward prediction error (RPE) is among the great successes of computational neuroscience. However, recent results contradict a core aspect of this theory: specifically that the neurons convey a scalar, homogeneous signal. While the predominant family of extensions to the RPE model replicates the classic model in multiple parallel circuits, we argue that these models are ill suited to explain reports of heterogeneity in task variable encoding across DA neurons. Instead, we introduce a complementary 'feature-specific RPE' model, positing that individual ventral tegmental area DA neurons report RPEs for different aspects of an animal's moment-to-moment situation. Further, we show how our framework can be extended to explain patterns of heterogeneity in action responses reported among substantia nigra pars compacta DA neurons. This theory reconciles new observations of DA heterogeneity with classic ideas about RPE coding while also providing a new perspective of how the brain performs reinforcement learning in high-dimensional environments.
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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.