The roles of the anterior cingulate cortex and its dopamine receptors in self-paced cost-benefit decision making in rats.
It has been shown that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and its dopamine system are crucial for decision making that requires physical/emotional effort, but not for all forms of cost-benefit decision making. Previous studies had mostly employed behavioral tasks with two competing cost-reward options that were preset by the experimenters. However, few studies have been conducted using scenarios in which the subjects have full control over the energy/time expenditure required to obtain a proportional reward. Here, we assessed the roles of the ACC and its dopamine system in cost-benefit decision making by utilizing a "do more get more" (DMGM) task and a time-reward trade-off (TRTO) task, wherein the animals were able to self-determine how much effort or time to expend at a nosepoke operandum for a proportional reward. Our results showed that (1) ACC inactivation severely impaired DMGM task performance, with a reduction in the rate of correct responses and a decrease in the effort expended, but did not affect the TRTO task; and (2) blocking ACC D2 receptors had no impact on DMGM task performance in the baseline cost-benefit scenario, but it significantly reduced the attempts to invest increased effort for a large reward when the benefit-cost ratio was reduced by half. In contrast, blocking ACC D1 receptors had no effect on DMGM task performance. These findings suggest that the ACC is required for self-paced effort-based but not for time-reward trade-off decision making. Furthermore, ACC dopamine D2 but not D1 receptors are involved in DMGM decision making.
Institute of Neurobiology & State Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology, Institutes of Brain Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200032, China.
Shuai
0000-0001-7104-8827
S
Wang
Institute of Neurobiology & State Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology, Institutes of Brain Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200032, China.
Shan-Hu
SH
Hu
Institute of Neurobiology & State Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology, Institutes of Brain Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200032, China.
Yi
Y
Shi
Institute of Neurobiology & State Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology, Institutes of Brain Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200032, China. bmli@ncu.edu.cn.|Center for Neuropsychiatric Diseases, Institute of Life Science, Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330031, China. bmli@ncu.edu.cn.
Bao-Ming
BM
Li
D000818:Animals; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003657:Decision Making; D006179:Gyrus Cinguli; D051381:Rats; D011954:Receptors, Dopamine / Q000502:physiology*; D012201:Reward
D011954:Receptors, Dopamine
Anterior cingulate cortex; Cost–benefit; Decision making; Dopamine receptors; Rat