TY - JOUR
T1 - Silencing the critics
T2 - Understanding the effects of cocaine sensitization on dorsolateral and ventral striatum in the context of an Actor/Critic model
AU - Takahashi, Yuji
AU - Schoenbaum, Geoffrey
AU - Niv, Yael
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the members of the Space Physics Group, Department of Physics at the University of Maryland, and the EPACT instrument team, Goddard Space Flight Center, for the construction of the instrumentation. We thank K. W. Ogilvie, R. B. Torbert, and A. J. Lazarus for the SWE solar wind data cited here. This work was supported in part by NASA contract NAS5-30927 and grant NAG 5-2865. The work of J. R. J. was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant ATM 9616547 and by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under grants NAG 2251 and NAGW 1931.
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - A critical problem in daily decision making is how to choose actions now in order to bring about rewards later. Indeed, many of our actions have long-term consequences, and it is important to not be myopic in balancing the pros and cons of different options, but rather to take into account both immediate and delayed consequences of actions. Failures to do so may be manifest as persistent, maladaptive decision-making, one example of which is addiction where behavior seems to be driven by the immediate positive experiences with drugs, despite the delayed adverse consequences. A recent study by Takahashi et al. (2007) investigated the effects of cocaine sensitization on decision making in rats and showed that drug use resulted in altered representations in the ventral striatum and the dorsolateral striatum, areas that have been implicated in the neural instantiation of a computational solution to optimal long-term actions selection called the Actor/Critic framework. In this Focus article we discuss their results and offer a computational interpretation in terms of drug-induced impairments in the Critic. We first survey the different lines of evidence linking the subparts of the striatum to the Actor/Critic framework, and then suggest two possible scenarios of breakdown that are suggested by Takahashi et al.'s (2007) data. As both are compatible with the current data, we discuss their different predictions and how these could be empirically tested in order to further elucidate (and hopefully inch towards curing) the neural basis of drug addiction.
AB - A critical problem in daily decision making is how to choose actions now in order to bring about rewards later. Indeed, many of our actions have long-term consequences, and it is important to not be myopic in balancing the pros and cons of different options, but rather to take into account both immediate and delayed consequences of actions. Failures to do so may be manifest as persistent, maladaptive decision-making, one example of which is addiction where behavior seems to be driven by the immediate positive experiences with drugs, despite the delayed adverse consequences. A recent study by Takahashi et al. (2007) investigated the effects of cocaine sensitization on decision making in rats and showed that drug use resulted in altered representations in the ventral striatum and the dorsolateral striatum, areas that have been implicated in the neural instantiation of a computational solution to optimal long-term actions selection called the Actor/Critic framework. In this Focus article we discuss their results and offer a computational interpretation in terms of drug-induced impairments in the Critic. We first survey the different lines of evidence linking the subparts of the striatum to the Actor/Critic framework, and then suggest two possible scenarios of breakdown that are suggested by Takahashi et al.'s (2007) data. As both are compatible with the current data, we discuss their different predictions and how these could be empirically tested in order to further elucidate (and hopefully inch towards curing) the neural basis of drug addiction.
KW - Actor/critic
KW - Cocaine
KW - Reinforcement learning
KW - Striatum
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U2 - 10.3389/neuro.01.014.2008
DO - 10.3389/neuro.01.014.2008
M3 - Review article
C2 - 18982111
AN - SCOPUS:67651147037
SN - 1662-4548
VL - 2
SP - 86
EP - 89
JO - Frontiers in Neuroscience
JF - Frontiers in Neuroscience
IS - JUL
ER -