A cholinergic feedback circuitto regulate striatal population uncertainty and optimize reinforcement learning

  1. Nicholas T Franklin
  2. Michael J Frank  Is a corresponding author
  1. Brown University, United States

Abstract

Convergent evidence suggeststhat the basal ganglia support reinforcement learning by adjusting action values according to reward prediction errors. However, adaptive behavior in stochasticenvironments requires the consideration of uncertainty to dynamically adjust the learning rate. We consider how cholinergic tonically active interneurons (TANs) may endow the striatum with such a mechanismin computational models spanning three Marr's levels of analysis. In the neural model, TANs modulate the excitability of spiny neurons, theirpopulation response to reinforcement, and hence the effective learning rate. Long TAN pauses facilitated robustness to spuriousoutcomes by increasing divergence in synaptic weights between neurons coding for alternative action values,whereas short TAN pauses facilitated stochastic behavior but increased responsiveness to change-points in outcome contingencies.A feedback control system allowed TAN pauses to be dynamically modulated by uncertainty across the spiny neuron population,allowing the system to self-tune and optimizeperformance across stochastic environments.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Nicholas T Franklin

    Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Brown Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, Providence, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  2. Michael J Frank

    Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Brown Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, Providence, United States
    For correspondence
    Michael_Frank@brown.edu
    Competing interests
    Michael J Frank, Reviewing editor, eLife.

Copyright

© 2015, Franklin & Frank

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 2,887
    views
  • 548
    downloads
  • 75
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Nicholas T Franklin
  2. Michael J Frank
(2015)
A cholinergic feedback circuitto regulate striatal population uncertainty and optimize reinforcement learning
eLife 4:e12029.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.12029

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.12029

Further reading

    1. Computational and Systems Biology
    2. Physics of Living Systems
    Natanael Spisak, Gabriel Athènes ... Aleksandra M Walczak
    Tools and Resources Updated

    B-cell repertoires are characterized by a diverse set of receptors of distinct specificities generated through two processes of somatic diversification: V(D)J recombination and somatic hypermutations. B-cell clonal families stem from the same V(D)J recombination event, but differ in their hypermutations. Clonal families identification is key to understanding B-cell repertoire function, evolution, and dynamics. We present HILARy (high-precision inference of lineages in antibody repertoires), an efficient, fast, and precise method to identify clonal families from single- or paired-chain repertoire sequencing datasets. HILARy combines probabilistic models that capture the receptor generation and selection statistics with adapted clustering methods to achieve consistently high inference accuracy. It automatically leverages the phylogenetic signal of shared mutations in difficult repertoire subsets. Exploiting the high sensitivity of the method, we find the statistics of evolutionary properties such as the site frequency spectrum and dN/dS ratio do not depend on the junction length. We also identify a broad range of selection pressures spanning two orders of magnitude.

    1. Computational and Systems Biology
    2. Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Ritwik Maity, Xuepei Zhang ... Javier Sancho
    Research Article

    Antimicrobial resistance is responsible for an alarming number of deaths, estimated at 5 million per year. To combat priority pathogens, like Helicobacter pylori, the development of novel therapies is of utmost importance. Understanding the molecular alterations induced by medications is critical for the design of multi-targeting treatments capable of eradicating the infection and mitigating its pathogenicity. However, the application of bulk omics approaches for unraveling drug molecular mechanisms of action is limited by their inability to discriminate between target-specific modifications and off-target effects. This study introduces a multi-omics method to overcome the existing limitation. For the first time, the Proteome Integral Solubility Alteration (PISA) assay is utilized in bacteria in the PISA-Express format to link proteome solubility with different and potentially immediate responses to drug treatment, enabling us the resolution to understand target-specific modifications and off-target effects. This study introduces a comprehensive method for understanding drug mechanisms and optimizing the development of multi-targeting antimicrobial therapies.