title: Ventral striatal dopamine reflects behavioral and neural signatures of model-based control during sequential decision making.
abstract: Dual system theories suggest that behavioral control is parsed between a deliberative "model-based" and a more reflexive "model-free" system. A balance of control exerted by these systems is thought to be related to dopamine neurotransmission. However, in the absence of direct measures of human dopamine, it remains unknown whether this reflects a quantitative relation with dopamine either in the striatum or other brain areas. Using a sequential decision task performed during functional magnetic resonance imaging, combined with striatal measures of dopamine using [(18)F]DOPA positron emission tomography, we show that higher presynaptic ventral striatal dopamine levels were associated with a behavioral bias toward more model-based control. Higher presynaptic dopamine in ventral striatum was associated with greater coding of model-based signatures in lateral prefrontal cortex and diminished coding of model-free prediction errors in ventral striatum. Thus, interindividual variability in ventral striatal presynaptic dopamine reflects a balance in the behavioral expression and the neural signatures of model-free and model-based control. Our data provide a novel perspective on how alterations in presynaptic dopamine levels might be accompanied by a disruption of behavioral control as observed in aging or neuropsychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia and addiction.
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Fellow Group "Cognitive and Affective Control of Behavioral Adaptation", Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, 04130 Leipzig, Germany; Department of Neurology, Otto von Guericke University, 39118 Magdeburg, Germany; Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Campus Charité Mitte, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, 10115 Berlin, Germany; deserno@cbs.mpg.de.
authors.forename: Lorenz
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Deserno
authors.affiliation: Translational Neuromodeling Unit, Institute for Biomedical Engineering, University of Zurich and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, 8032 Zurich, Switzerland; Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Hospital of Psychiatry, University of Zurich, 8032 Zurich, Switzerland;
authors.forename: Quentin J M
authors.initials: QJ
authors.lastname: Huys
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Campus Charité Mitte, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, 10115 Berlin, Germany;
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Boehme
authors.affiliation: Department of Nuclear Medicine, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, 10115 Berlin, Germany;
authors.forename: Ralph
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Buchert
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Fellow Group "Cognitive and Affective Control of Behavioral Adaptation", Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, 04130 Leipzig, Germany; Department of Neurology, Otto von Guericke University, 39118 Magdeburg, Germany; Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, Otto von Guericke University, 39118 Magdeburg, Germany; Departments of.
authors.forename: Hans-Jochen
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Heinze
authors.affiliation: Neuroscience, Psychiatry and Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260;
authors.forename: Anthony A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Grace
authors.affiliation: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom; Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin School of Mind and Brain, 10115 Berlin, Germany; and.
authors.forename: Raymond J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Dolan
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Campus Charité Mitte, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, 10115 Berlin, Germany; Cluster of Excellence NeuroCure, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, 10115 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Heinz
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Fellow Group "Cognitive and Affective Control of Behavioral Adaptation", Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, 04130 Leipzig, Germany; Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Campus Charité Mitte, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, 10115 Berlin, Germany;
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Schlagenhauf
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001519:Behavior; D003342:Corpus Striatum / Q000378:metabolism*; D003657:Decision Making; D004298:Dopamine / Q000378:metabolism*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D004298:Dopamine
keywords: PET; decision making; dopamine; fMRI; reinforcement learning