title: The habenula encodes negative motivational value associated with primary punishment in humans.
abstract: Learning what to approach, and what to avoid, involves assigning value to environmental cues that predict positive and negative events. Studies in animals indicate that the lateral habenula encodes the previously learned negative motivational value of stimuli. However, involvement of the habenula in dynamic trial-by-trial aversive learning has not been assessed, and the functional role of this structure in humans remains poorly characterized, in part, due to its small size. Using high-resolution functional neuroimaging and computational modeling of reinforcement learning, we demonstrate positive habenula responses to the dynamically changing values of cues signaling painful electric shocks, which predict behavioral suppression of responses to those cues across individuals. By contrast, negative habenula responses to monetary reward cue values predict behavioral invigoration. Our findings show that the habenula plays a key role in an online aversive learning system and in generating associated motivated behavior in humans.
authors: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, United Kingdom;Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom; rebecca.lawson@ucl.ac.uk j.roiser@ucl.ac.uk.
authors: Rebecca P
authors: RP
authors: Lawson
authors: Computational and Biological Learning Laboratory, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, United Kingdom;Center for Information and Neural Networks, National Institute for Information and Communications Technology, Osaka 565-0871, Japan;
authors: Ben
authors: B
authors: Seymour
authors: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom;
authors: Eleanor
authors: E
authors: Loh
authors: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom;Laboratoire de Recherche en Neuroimagerie, Département des Neurosciences Cliniques, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, Université de Lausanne, 1011 Lausanne, Switzerland; and.
authors: Antoine
authors: A
authors: Lutti
authors: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom;
authors: Raymond J
authors: RJ
authors: Dolan
authors: Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, United Kingdom.
authors: Peter
authors: P
authors: Dayan
authors: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom;
authors: Nikolaus
authors: N
authors: Weiskopf
authors: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, United Kingdom; rebecca.lawson@ucl.ac.uk j.roiser@ucl.ac.uk.
authors: Jonathan P
authors: JP
authors: Roiser
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D059907:Functional Neuroimaging; D019262:Habenula / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation / Q000502:physiology*; D011678:Punishment / Q000523:psychology*; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology; D013045:Species Specificity; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: conditioned behavior; high-resolution fMRI; pallidum