The Role of Striatal Tonically Active Neurons in Reward Prediction Error Signaling during Instrumental Task Performance
Journal of Neuroscience. 2011-01-26; 31(4): 1507-1515
DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.4880-10.2011
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Apicella P(1), Ravel S, Deffains M, Legallet E.
Author information:
(1)Laboratoire de Neurobiologie de la Cognition, Université de Provence, Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique, France.
The detection of differences between predictions and actual outcomes is
important for associative learning and for selecting actions according to their
potential future reward. There are reports that tonically active neurons (TANs)
in the primate striatum may carry information about errors in the prediction of
rewards. However, this property seems to be expressed in classical conditioning
tasks but not during performance of an instrumental task. To address this issue,
we recorded the activity of TANs in the putamen of two monkeys performing an
instrumental task in which probabilistic rewarding outcomes were contingent on
an action in block-design experiments. Behavioral evidence suggests that animals
adjusted their performance according to the level of probability for reward on
each trial block. We found that the TAN response to reward was stronger as the
reward probability decreased; this effect was especially prominent on the late
component of the pause-rebound pattern of typical response seen in these
neurons. The responsiveness to reward omission was also increased with
increasing reward probability, whereas there were no detectable effects on
responses to the stimulus that triggered the movement. Overall, the modulation
of TAN responses by reward probability appeared relatively weak compared with
that observed previously in a probabilistic classical conditioning task using
the same block design. These data indicate that instrumental conditioning was
less effective at demonstrating prediction error signaling in TANs. We conclude
that the sensitivity of the TAN system to reward probability depends on the
specific learning situation in which animals experienced the stimulus-reward
associations.
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4880-10.2011
PMCID: PMC6623604
PMID: 21273435 [Indexed for MEDLINE]