What does a burst of dopamine signal? · Grey Matter

Recordings in monkeys showed that midbrain dopamine neurons burst when a reward arrives unexpectedly, stay at their baseline rate when a fully predicted reward arrives, and pause when a predicted reward fails to come.

What does a burst of dopamine signal?

Recordings in monkeys showed that midbrain dopamine neurons burst when a reward arrives unexpectedly, stay at their baseline rate when a fully predicted reward arrives, and pause when a predicted reward fails to come. As the animal learns that a cue predicts the reward, the burst moves from the reward to the cue. This is the reward prediction error of reinforcement-learning theory, the difference between what happened and what was expected, as Schultz, Dayan and Montague pointed out in 1997. Broadcast to the striatum and frontal cortex, the signal tells recently active synapses whether the outcome was better or worse than predicted, so it acts as a teaching signal more than a pleasure signal.