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Distinct roles for direct and indirect pathway striatal neurons in reinforcement - Nature Neuroscience

  • ️Kreitzer, Anatol C
  • ️Sun Apr 29 2012
  • Brief Communication
  • Published: 29 April 2012

Nature Neuroscience volume 15, pages 816–818 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

Dopamine signaling is implicated in reinforcement learning, but the neural substrates targeted by dopamine are poorly understood. We bypassed dopamine signaling itself and tested how optogenetic activation of dopamine D1 or D2 receptor–expressing striatal projection neurons influenced reinforcement learning in mice. Stimulating D1 receptor–expressing neurons induced persistent reinforcement, whereas stimulating D2 receptor–expressing neurons induced transient punishment, indicating that activation of these circuits is sufficient to modify the probability of performing future actions.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Nikon Imaging Center at the University of California San Francisco for assistance with image acquisition, K. Deisseroth for optogenetic constructs and K. Tye for helpful comments on the manuscript. A.C.K. and co-workers are funded by the W.M. Keck Foundation, the Pew Biomedical Scholars Program, the McKnight Foundation and the US National Institutes of Health.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Alexxai V Kravitz and Lynne D Tye: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA

    Alexxai V Kravitz, Lynne D Tye & Anatol C Kreitzer

  2. Departments of Physiology and Neurology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA

    Lynne D Tye & Anatol C Kreitzer

  3. Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA

    Anatol C Kreitzer

Authors

  1. Alexxai V Kravitz

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  2. Lynne D Tye

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  3. Anatol C Kreitzer

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Contributions

A.V.K. and L.D.T. jointly conducted the experiments and analyzed the data. A.V.K. and A.C.K. conceived the study and wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anatol C Kreitzer.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Text and Figures

Supplementary Figures 1–5 and Supplementary Tables 1–3 (PDF 517 kb)

Supplementary Video 1

Reinforcement of laser-paired trigger contact in a naïve dMSN-ChR2 mouse. Mouse has never received laser stimulation at start of the video, and gains a strong preference within ~10 minutes of training. Video shows first 15 minutes of the first day of training, sped up 10x. (WMV 5630 kb)

Supplementary Video 2

Punishment of laser-paired trigger contact in a naïve iMSN-ChR2 mouse. Mouse has never received laser stimulation at start of the video, and starts avoiding the laser-paired trigger, as well as exhibiting an “escape response” within ∼10 minutes of training. Video shows first 15 minutes of the first day of training, sped up 10x. (WMV 5068 kb)

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Cite this article

Kravitz, A., Tye, L. & Kreitzer, A. Distinct roles for direct and indirect pathway striatal neurons in reinforcement. Nat Neurosci 15, 816–818 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3100

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  • Received: 09 February 2012

  • Accepted: 02 April 2012

  • Published: 29 April 2012

  • Issue Date: June 2012

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3100

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