title: Interaction of Instrumental and Goal-Directed Learning Modulates Prediction Error Representations in the Ventral Striatum.
abstract: Goal-directed and instrumental learning are both important controllers of human behavior. Learning about which stimulus event occurs in the environment and the reward associated with them allows humans to seek out the most valuable stimulus and move through the environment in a goal-directed manner. Stimulus-response associations are characteristic of instrumental learning, whereas response-outcome associations are the hallmark of goal-directed learning. Here we provide behavioral, computational, and neuroimaging results from a novel task in which stimulus-response and response-outcome associations are learned simultaneously but dominate behavior at different stages of the experiment. We found that prediction error representations in the ventral striatum depend on which type of learning dominates. Furthermore, the amygdala tracks the time-dependent weighting of stimulus-response versus response-outcome learning. Our findings suggest that the goal-directed and instrumental controllers dynamically engage the ventral striatum in representing prediction errors whenever one of them is dominating choice behavior.
  
  
  
  Converging evidence in human neuroimaging studies has shown that the reward prediction errors are correlated with activity in the ventral striatum. Our results demonstrate that this region is simultaneously correlated with a stimulus prediction error. Furthermore, the learning system that is currently dominating behavioral choice dynamically engages the ventral striatum for computing its prediction errors. This demonstrates that the prediction error representations are highly dynamic and influenced by various experimental context. This finding points to a general role of the ventral striatum in detecting expectancy violations and encoding error signals regardless of the specific nature of the reinforcer itself.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Software Engineering and Theoretical Computer Science, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin 10587, Germany, rong@ni.tu-berlin.de.|Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin, Berlin 10115, Germany.
authors.forename: Rong
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: Institute of Software Engineering and Theoretical Computer Science, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin 10587, Germany.
authors.forename: Wendelin
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Böhmer
authors.affiliation: Institute for Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg 20246, Germany, and.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-7257-428X
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hebart
authors.affiliation: Institute for Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg 20246, Germany, and.
authors.forename: Samson
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chien
authors.affiliation: Institute for Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg 20246, Germany, and.
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sommer
authors.affiliation: Institute of Software Engineering and Theoretical Computer Science, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin 10587, Germany.|Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin, Berlin 10115, Germany.|School of Electronics and Information, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China.
authors.forename: Klaus
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Obermayer
authors.affiliation: Institute for Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg 20246, Germany, and.
authors.forename: Jan
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-1020-7115
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gläscher
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D000679:Amygdala / Q000502:physiology; D003216:Conditioning, Operant / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008959:Models, Neurological; D059906:Neuroimaging; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D012201:Reward; D066328:Ventral Striatum / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: amygdala; goal-directed learning; prediction error; ventral striatum