Intrinsically regulated learning is modulated by synaptic dopamine signaling
- New York University, United States
- L'Institut d'Investigació Biomèdica de Bellvitge (IDIBELL), Spain
- McGill University, Canada
- Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
- Otto-von-Guericke University, Germany
- Sant Pau Institute of Biomedical Research, Spain
Abstract
We recently provided evidence that an intrinsic reward-related signal-triggered by successful learning in absence of any external feedback-modulated the entrance of new information into long-term memory via the activation of the dopaminergic midbrain, hippocampus, and ventral striatum (the SN/VTA-Hippocampal loop; Ripollés et al., 2016). Here, we used a double-blind, within-subject randomized pharmacological intervention to test whether this learning process is indeed dopamine-dependent. A group of healthy individuals completed three behavioural sessions of a language-learning task after the intake of different pharmacological treatments: a dopaminergic precursor, a dopamine receptor antagonist or a placebo. Results show that the pharmacological intervention modulated behavioral measures of both learning and pleasantness, inducing memory benefits after 24 hours only for those participants with a high sensitivity to reward. These results provide causal evidence for a dopamine-dependent mechanism instrumental in intrinsically regulated learning and further suggest that subject-specific reward sensitivity drastically alters learning success.
Data availability
Data is available via Dryad (https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.g5f7v1j)
-
Data from: Intrinsically regulated learning is modulated by synaptic dopamine signalingAvailable at Dryad Digital Repository under a CC0 Public Domain Dedication.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Ministerio de Industria, Economía y Competitividad (PSI2011-29219)
- Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells
Ministerio de Industria, Economía y Competitividad (AP2010-4179)
- Pablo Ripollés
Morelly-Rotary Postdoctoral Fellowship
- Laura Ferreri
Ministerio de Sanidad, Servicios Sociales e Igualdad (CP04/00 121)
- Marta Valle
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG-SFB-779/A15)
- Toemme Noesselt
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Vishnu Murty, Temple University, United States
Ethics
Human subjects: This study was performed according to local ethics and to the Declaration of Helsinki. It was approved by the Ethics Committee of Hospital Sant Pau and by the Spanish Medicines and Medical Devices Agency (EudraCT 2016-000801-35). All participants gave informed written consent and received compensation for their participation in the study according to Spanish legislation.
Version history
- Received: May 9, 2018
- Accepted: August 29, 2018
- Accepted Manuscript published: August 30, 2018 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: September 11, 2018 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2018, Ripollés et al.
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
-
- 2,400
- views
-
- 341
- downloads
-
- 36
- 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)
Intrinsically regulated learning is modulated by synaptic dopamine signaling
eLife 7:e38113.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.38113
Further reading
-
- Neuroscience
Mechanosensory neurons located across the body surface respond to tactile stimuli and elicit diverse behavioral responses, from relatively simple stimulus location-aimed movements to complex movement sequences. How mechanosensory neurons and their postsynaptic circuits influence such diverse behaviors remains unclear. We previously discovered that Drosophila perform a body location-prioritized grooming sequence when mechanosensory neurons at different locations on the head and body are simultaneously stimulated by dust (Hampel et al., 2017; Seeds et al., 2014). Here, we identify nearly all mechanosensory neurons on the Drosophila head that individually elicit aimed grooming of specific head locations, while collectively eliciting a whole head grooming sequence. Different tracing methods were used to reconstruct the projections of these neurons from different locations on the head to their distinct arborizations in the brain. This provides the first synaptic resolution somatotopic map of a head, and defines the parallel-projecting mechanosensory pathways that elicit head grooming.
-
- Neuroscience
Cortical folding is an important feature of primate brains that plays a crucial role in various cognitive and behavioral processes. Extensive research has revealed both similarities and differences in folding morphology and brain function among primates including macaque and human. The folding morphology is the basis of brain function, making cross-species studies on folding morphology important for understanding brain function and species evolution. However, prior studies on cross-species folding morphology mainly focused on partial regions of the cortex instead of the entire brain. Previously, our research defined a whole-brain landmark based on folding morphology: the gyral peak. It was found to exist stably across individuals and ages in both human and macaque brains. Shared and unique gyral peaks in human and macaque are identified in this study, and their similarities and differences in spatial distribution, anatomical morphology, and functional connectivity were also dicussed.
