Topic: identity-specific reward memories

Summary: Dopamine has long been known to critically contribute to learning. The canonical view is that midbrain dopamine neurons broadcast errors in reward prediction. These learning signals are thought to cache the general value of an outcome to its predictor and to reinforce response policies that rely on past success, rather than forethought of specific outcomes. But, to ensure flexible behavior, we do not just learn the general value of predictive events. We also encode the relationships between these cues and the identifying features of their associated outcomes. Such stimulus-outcome mem