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Rolling the Dice:The Importance of Mesolimbic Dopamine Signaling in Risky Decision Making
Jonathan A Sugam1 and Regina M Carelli1,2
1Department of Psychology, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA; 2Neuroscience Center, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USAE-mail: [email protected]
DISCLOSUREThe authors declare no conflict of interest.
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Neuropsychopharmacology Reviews (2013) 38, 248; doi:10.1038/npp.2012.173
To maximize resources, organisms must learn to predict the outcome of various options and choose the most valuable alternative. Behavioral choices such as playing it safe vs taking a risk engage a complex circuit that includes the mesolimbic dopamine (DA) system. A seminal study by Schultz et al (1997) showed that mesolimbic DA neurons function as a teaching signal and encode cues that predict rewards and errors in those predictions. DA release in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) reflects this learning signal, and also processes information about reward value as animals are actively making decisions. For example, DA release in the NAc core is higher for cues that predict more valuable rewards, and signals the most valuable available option (Day et al, 2010).
Organisms rarely encounter situations in which simple stimulus-outcome associations are in effect, and thus must rely on multiple factors to make appropriate decisions including the representations of internal needs and external states, possible courses of action, and the consequences of those actions (Rangel et al, 2008). Risky decision making involves this type of complex evaluation and is...