Topic: trial-and-error learning

How does the activity of midbrain dopamine (DA) neurons influence behavior? A prominent, but incompletely tested, hypothesis is that the activity of ventral tegmental area (VTA) DA neurons generates downstream representations of state values in ventral striatum (NAc), while substantia nigra pars compacta DA activity generates action values in the dorsal striatum. To test this model, we performed Neuropixels recordings in a trial-and-error probabilistic learning task where mice continuously adapted their choices to obtain a reward of optogenetic stimulation of VTA DA neurons (paired with an aud