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Reward-predicting cues evoke activity in midbrain dopamine neurons that encodes fundamental attributes of economic value, including reward magnitude, delay and uncertainty. We found that dopamine release in rat nucleus accumbens encodes anticipated benefits, but not effort-based response costs unless they are atypically low. This neural separation of costs and benefits indicates that mesolimbic dopamine scales with the value of pending rewards, but does not encode the net utility of the action to obtain them.

Original publication

DOI

10.1038/nn.2460

Type

Journal article

Journal

Nat Neurosci

Publication Date

01/2010

Volume

13

Pages

25 - 27

Keywords

Animals, Behavior, Animal, Brain Chemistry, Conditioning, Operant, Cues, Decision Making, Discrimination Learning, Dopamine, Electrochemistry, Functional Laterality, Male, Nucleus Accumbens, Rats, Rats, Sprague-Dawley, Reaction Time, Reinforcement Schedule, Reward, Uncertainty