Human substantia nigra neurons encode unexpected financial rewards
Open accessAbstract
The brain's sensitivity to unexpected outcomes plays a fundamental role in an organism's ability to adapt and learn new behaviors. Emerging research suggests that midbrain dopaminergic neurons encode these unexpected outcomes. We used microelectrode recordings during deep brain stimulation surgery to study neuronal activity in the human substantia nigra (SN) while patients with Parkinson's disease engaged in a probabilistic learning task motivated by virtual financial rewards. Based on a model of the participants' expected reward, we divided trial outcomes into expected and unexpected gains and losses. SN neurons exhibited significantly higher firing rates after unexpected gains than unexpected losses. No such differences were observed after expected gains and losses. This result provides critical support for the hypothesized role of the SN in human reinforcement learning.
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The human SN/VTA is activated by rewards.
“Such studies (e.g. [48, 51]) have demonstrated that the human SN/VTA is activated by rewards, a finding confirmed by a recent study using electrophysiological recordings [52].”
From A neoHebbian framework for episodic memory; role of dopamine-dependent late LTP (2011) · cites this paper as [52]
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References 28 · Cited by 264
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- Authors
- Zaghloul, K. A., Blanco, J. A., Weidemann, C. T., McGill, K., Jaggi, J. L., Baltuch, G. H., & Kahana, M. J.
- Affiliations
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- Corresponding author
- Zaghloul, Kareem A.
- Kahana, Michael J.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2009-03-13
- Volume
- 323
- Issue
- 5920
- Pages
- 1496-1499
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- PMC
- PMC2839450
- OpenAlex
- W2126306411
- Cited by
- 264
- References
- 28
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 21 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 20 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 19 · 2013: 15 · 2012: 23
- FWCI
- 8.73
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- CogPrints (University of Southampton) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (5r01ns048598-04)
- National Institute of Mental Health (MH-062196, MH-61975, P50MH062196, R01MH061975)
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01-NS048598)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Neurology › Neurological disorders and treatments
- Keywords
- substantia nigra, dopaminergic neurons, monetary rewards, reinforcement learning, Parkinson's disease, probabilistic learning, human brain activity, deep brain stimulation
- MeSH terms
- Action Potentials, Dopamine, Economics, Female, Humans, Learning, Male, Microelectrodes, Middle Aged, Models, Psychological, Neurons, Parkinson Disease, Probability, Reinforcement, Psychology, Reward, Substantia Nigra, Feedback, Psychological, Deep Brain Stimulation
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