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Dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens core signals perceived saliency
Open accessAbstract
A large body of work has aimed to define the precise information encoded by dopaminergic projections innervating the nucleus accumbens (NAc). Prevailing models are based on reward prediction error (RPE) theory, in which dopamine updates associations between rewards and predictive cues by encoding perceived errors between predictions and outcomes. However, RPE cannot describe multiple phenomena to which dopamine is inextricably linked, such as behavior driven by aversive and neutral stimuli. We combined a series of behavioral tasks with direct, subsecond dopamine monitoring in the NAc of mice, machine learning, computational modeling, and optogenetic manipulations to describe behavior and related dopamine release patterns across multiple contingencies reinforced by differentially valenced outcomes. We show that dopamine release only conforms to RPE predictions in a subset of learning scenarios but fits valence-independent perceived saliency encoding across conditions. Here, we provide an extended, comprehensive framework for accumbal dopamine release in behavioral control.
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“Despite the demonstration that white light can induce NAc dopamine release (Robinson et al., 2019; Kutlu et al., 2021), the striatal dopamine response to visual threats is not well characterized in mice.”
From Ventral striatum dopamine release encodes unique properties of visual stimuli in mice (2023) · cites this paper as Kutlu et al., 2021
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Metadata
- Authors
- Kutlu, M. G., Zachry, J. E., Melugin, P. R., Cajigas, S. A., Chevee, M. F., Kelly, S. J., Kutlu, B., Tian, L., Siciliano, C. A., & Calipari, E. S.
- Affiliations
- Vanderbilt University (US)
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- University of California, Davis (US)
- Corresponding author
- Calipari, Erin S.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Current Biology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2021-11
- Volume
- 31
- Issue
- 21
- Pages
- 4748-4761.e8
- ISSN
- 0960-9822 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC9084920
- OpenAlex
- W3199237971
- Cited by
- 238
- References
- 84
- Citations by year
- 2026: 33 · 2025: 64 · 2024: 64 · 2023: 47 · 2022: 25 · 2021: 4
- FWCI
- 16.11
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/legal/tdmrep-license (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/open-access/userlicense/1.0/ (vor, 372 d)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-017 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-037 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-012 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-029 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-004 (stm-asf)
- Locations
- Current Biology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (5dp1da048931-05, KL2TR002245)
- National Institute on Drug Abuse (K99DA045103, F31DA031533, K99DA042111, DP1-DA048931, R00DA042111, R00DA045103, R01DA052317)
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences (T32GM007628, T32GM007347, T32GM152284)
- National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P50HD103537)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Keywords
- dopamine release, nucleus accumbens core, reward prediction error, valence, aversive stimuli, neutral stimuli, dopaminergic pathways, reinforcement learning, behavioral control
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Cues, Dopamine, Nucleus Accumbens, Reward, Mice, Optogenetics
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