ArticleNature neuroscience2025
Estrogen modulates reward prediction errors and reinforcement learning.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Vitamin A deficiency induces sex-specific reward processing alterations through a dysregulation of the mesolimbic dopamine transmission in mice.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- The influence of sex on cognition in psychosis.Schizophrenia research. Cognition · 2026Article
- Synaptic Actions of Estradiol in the Brain's Reward System: Linking Mechanisms to Behavior and Disease.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Review
- A cognitive computational framework for ovarian hormone modulation of addiction.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Sex-specific associations of childhood adversity with frontostriatal network organization and anhedonia in young adulthood.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Spatiotemporally Distinct Dopamine Domains in the Hippocampus.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Viral Mimicry of Alzheimer's Disease: Innate Sensing of Self-Nucleic Acids as a Driver of Glial Senescence.Journal of molecular neuroscience : MN · 2026Review
- Acetylcholine demixes heterogeneous dopamine signals for learning and moving.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Y-maze performance predicts refined motor learning in mice.PloS one · 2026Article
- Estrogen modulates reward prediction errors and reinforcement learning.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
- Dopamine transients encode reward prediction errors independent of learning rates.Cell reports · 2024Article
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10 authors.
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Abstract
Gonadal hormones act throughout the brain and modulate psychiatric symptoms. Yet how hormones influence cognitive processes is unclear. Exogenous 17β-estradiol, the most potent estrogen, modulates dopamine in the nucleus accumbens core, which instantiates reward prediction errors (RPEs), the difference between received and expected reward. Here we show that following endogenous increases in 17β-estradiol, dopamine RPEs and behavioral sensitivity to previous rewards are enhanced, and nucleus accumbens core dopamine reuptake proteins are reduced. Rats adjusted how quickly they initiated trials in a task with varying reward states, balancing effort against expected rewards. Nucleus accumbens core dopamine reflected RPEs that influenced rats' initiation times. Higher 17β-estradiol predicted greater sensitivity to reward states and larger RPEs. Proteomics revealed reduced dopamine transporter expression following 17β-estradiol increases. Finally, knockdown of midbrain estrogen receptors suppressed sensitivity to reward states. Therefore, endogenous 17β-estradiol predicts dopamine reuptake and RPE signaling, and causally dictates the impact of previous rewards on behavior.
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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.