Dopamine enhances model-free credit assignment through boosting of retrospective model-based inference

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Abstract

Dopamine is implicated in representing model-free (MF) reward prediction errors a as well as influencing model-based (MB) credit assignment and choice. Putative cooperative interactions between MB and MF systems include a guidance of MF credit assignment by MB inference. Here, we used a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subjects design to test an hypothesis that enhancing dopamine levels boosts the guidance of MF credit assignment by MB inference. In line with this, we found that levodopa enhanced guidance of MF credit assignment by MB inference, without impacting MF and MB influences directly. This drug effect correlated negatively with a dopamine-dependent change in purely MB credit assignment, possibly reflecting a trade-off between these two MB components of behavioural control. Our findings of a dopamine boost in MB inference guidance of MF learning highlights a novel DA influence on MB-MF cooperative interactions.

Data availability

Necessary source data files are openly available at: https://osf.io/4dfkv/.

Article and author information

Author details

Lorenz Deserno

Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

For correspondence
deserno_l@ukw.de

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-7392-5280
Rani Moran

Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, University College London, London, United Kingdom

For correspondence
rani.moran@gmail.com

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-7641-2402
Jochen Michely

Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-3072-2330
Ying Lee

Psychiatry and Psychology, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9491-4919
Peter Dayan

Max Planck Ring 8, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-3476-1839
Raymond J Dolan

The Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9356-761X

Funding

Wellcome Trust (098362/Z/12/Z)

Raymond J Dolan

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Open-access funding)

Lorenz Deserno
Rani Moran
Peter Dayan
Raymond J Dolan

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (402170461)

Lorenz Deserno
Raymond J Dolan

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: The study was approved by the University College London Research Ethics Committee (Project ID 11285/001). Subjects gave written informed consent before the experiment.

Copyright

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.