Connectionists: Just posted: "Functional specialization within the striatum along both the dorsal/ventral and anterior/posterior axes.. "

[Mark A. Gluck]

Dear Colleagues,

This paper from last year, a fMRI study with the Stark lab at UC 
Irvine, looked at striatal subregions activated during the 
reward-vs-punishment learning task used in our earlier Bodi et al. 
(2009) study of Parkinson's patients and dopaminergic drugs. It is 
has now been posted to our web site at:

http://www.gluck.edu/pdf/2011_Mattfled_L&M.pdf

Mattfeld, A. T., Gluck, M. A. and Stark C. L., (2011). Functional 
specialization within the striatum along both the dorsal/ventral and 
anterior/posterior axes during associative learning via reward and 
punishment. Learning and Memory. 8:703-711.

The goal of the present study was to elucidate the role of the human 
striatum in learning via reward and punishment during an associative 
learning task. Previous studies have identified the striatum as a 
critical component in the neural circuitry of reward-related 
learning. It remains unclear, however, under what task conditions, 
and to what extent, the striatum is modulated by punishment during an 
instrumental learning task. Using high-resolution fMRI during a 
reward- and punishment-based probabilistic associative learning task, 
we observed activity in the ventral putamen for stimuli learned via 
reward regardless of whether participants were correct or incorrect 
(i.e., outcome). In contrast, activity in the dorsal caudate was 
modulated by trials that received feedback - either correct reward or 
incorrect punishment trials. We also identified an anterior/posterior 
dissociation reflecting reward and punishment prediction error 
estimates. Additionally, differences in patterns of activity that 
correlated with the amount of training were identified along the 
anterior/posterior axis of the striatum. We suggest that unique 
subregions of the striatum - separated along both a dorsal/ventral 
and anterior/posterior axis - differentially participate in the 
learning of associations through reward and punishment. 

  Regards, Mark Gluck
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120715/056681c2/attachment.html