TY - JOUR
T1 - Nucleus accumbens dopamine tracks aversive stimulus duration and prediction but not value or prediction error
AU - Goedhoop, Jessica N.
AU - van den Boom, Bastijn J. G.
AU - Robke, Rhiannon
AU - Veen, Felice
AU - Fellinger, Lizz
AU - van Elzelingen, Wouter
AU - Arbab, Tara
AU - Willuhn, Ingo
N1 - Funding Information: We thank Ralph Hamelink and Nicole Yee for their technical support, Matthijs Feenstra for his input on the manuscript, Lucia Economico for illustrations, and Linda Dekker for histology. Publisher Copyright: © 2022, eLife Sciences Publications Ltd. All rights reserved.
PY - 2022/11/11
Y1 - 2022/11/11
N2 - There is active debate on the role of dopamine in processing aversive stimuli, where inferred roles range from no involvement at all, to signaling an aversive prediction error (APE). Here, we systematically investigate dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens core (NAC), which is closely linked to reward prediction errors, in rats exposed to white noise (WN, a versatile, underutilized, aversive stimulus) and its predictive cues. Both induced a negative dopamine ramp, followed by slow signal recovery upon stimulus cessation. In contrast to reward conditioning, this dopamine signal was unaffected by WN value, context valence, or probabilistic contingencies, and the WN dopamine response shifted only partially toward its predictive cue. However, unpredicted WN provoked slower post-stimulus signal recovery than predicted WN. Despite differing signal qualities, dopamine responses to simultaneous presentation of rewarding and aversive stimuli were additive. Together, our findings demonstrate that instead of an APE, NAC dopamine primarily tracks prediction and duration of aversive events.
AB - There is active debate on the role of dopamine in processing aversive stimuli, where inferred roles range from no involvement at all, to signaling an aversive prediction error (APE). Here, we systematically investigate dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens core (NAC), which is closely linked to reward prediction errors, in rats exposed to white noise (WN, a versatile, underutilized, aversive stimulus) and its predictive cues. Both induced a negative dopamine ramp, followed by slow signal recovery upon stimulus cessation. In contrast to reward conditioning, this dopamine signal was unaffected by WN value, context valence, or probabilistic contingencies, and the WN dopamine response shifted only partially toward its predictive cue. However, unpredicted WN provoked slower post-stimulus signal recovery than predicted WN. Despite differing signal qualities, dopamine responses to simultaneous presentation of rewarding and aversive stimuli were additive. Together, our findings demonstrate that instead of an APE, NAC dopamine primarily tracks prediction and duration of aversive events.
KW - aversive stimuli
KW - behavior
KW - dopamine
KW - motivation
KW - neuroscience
KW - nucleus accumbens
KW - prediction error
KW - rat
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85141571791&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.82711
DO - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.82711
M3 - Article
C2 - 36366962
SN - 2050-084X
VL - 11
JO - eLife
JF - eLife
M1 - e82711
ER -