Dopaminergic challenge dissociates learning from primary versus secondary sources of information

  1. Alicia J Rybicki  Is a corresponding author
  2. Sophie L Sowden
  3. Bianca Schuster
  4. Jennifer L Cook
  1. University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

Abstract

Some theories of human cultural evolution posit that humans have social-specific learning mechanisms that are adaptive specialisations moulded by natural selection to cope with the pressures of group living. However, the existence of neurochemical pathways that are specialised for learning from social information and from individual experience is widely debated. Cognitive neuroscientific studies present mixed evidence for social-specific learning mechanisms: some studies find dissociable neural correlates for social and individual learning whereas others find the same brain areas and, dopamine-mediated, computations involved in both. Here we demonstrate that, like individual learning, social learning is modulated by the dopamine D2 receptor antagonist haloperidol when social information is the primary learning source, but not when it comprises a secondary, additional element. Two groups (total N = 43) completed a decision-making task which required primary learning, from own experience, and secondary learning from an additional source. For one group the primary source was social, and secondary was individual; for the other group this was reversed. Haloperidol affected primary learning irrespective of social/individual nature, with no effect on learning from the secondary source. Thus, we illustrate that dopaminergic mechanisms underpinning learning can be dissociated along a primary-secondary but not a social-individual axis. These results resolve conflict in the literature and support an expanding field showing that, rather than being specialised for particular inputs, neurochemical pathways in the human brain can process both social and non-social cues and arbitrate between the two depending upon which cue is primarily relevant for the task at hand.

Data availability

All raw data and analysis scripts can be accessed at the Open Science Framework data repository:​​https://osf.io/398w4/?view_only=08c062a9694a4b00ac7cbc52ee333628

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Alicia J Rybicki

    University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
    For correspondence
    axr783@bham.ac.uk
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-6668-1214
  2. Sophie L Sowden

    University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9913-0515
  3. Bianca Schuster

    University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Jennifer L Cook

    University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-4916-8667

Funding

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (Midlands Integrative Biosciences Training Partnership (MIBTP) Doctoral Funding)

  • Alicia J Rybicki

H2020 European Research Council (757583 - Brain2Bee)

  • Sophie L Sowden
  • Bianca Schuster
  • Jennifer L Cook

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

Ethics

Human subjects: Informed consent was obtained from each subject. The study was in line with the local ethical guidelines approved by the local ethics committee (ERN_18_1588) and in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975.

Copyright

© 2022, Rybicki 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

  • 1,369
    views
  • 143
    downloads
  • 13
    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. Alicia J Rybicki
  2. Sophie L Sowden
  3. Bianca Schuster
  4. Jennifer L Cook
(2022)
Dopaminergic challenge dissociates learning from primary versus secondary sources of information
eLife 11:e74893.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74893

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74893

Further reading

    1. Developmental Biology
    2. Neuroscience
    Nalia Samba, Marie Gendrel
    Insight

    Exposure to ketone bodies in early development can reduce neurological impairments in a strain of the nematode C. elegans with PTEN defects.

    1. Genetics and Genomics
    2. Neuroscience
    Haojing Duan, Runye Shi ... Jianfeng Feng
    Research Article

    Structural brain aging has demonstrated strong inter-individual heterogeneity and mirroring patterns with brain development. However, due to the lack of large-scale longitudinal neuroimaging studies, most of the existing research focused on the cross-sectional changes of brain aging. In this investigation, we present a data-driven approach that incorporate both cross-sectional changes and longitudinal trajectories of structural brain aging and identified two brain aging patterns among 37,013 healthy participants from UK Biobank. Participants with accelerated brain aging also demonstrated accelerated biological aging, cognitive decline and increased genetic susceptibilities to major neuropsychiatric disorders. Further, by integrating longitudinal neuroimaging studies from a multi-center adolescent cohort, we validated the ‘last in, first out’ mirroring hypothesis and identified brain regions with manifested mirroring patterns between brain aging and brain development. Genomic analyses revealed risk loci and genes contributing to accelerated brain aging and delayed brain development, providing molecular basis for elucidating the biological mechanisms underlying brain aging and related disorders.