RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 A Neural Correlate of Reward-Based Behavioral Learning in Caudate Nucleus: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of a Stochastic Decision Task
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 1660
OP 1665
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3417-03.2004
VO 24
IS 7
A1 Masahiko Haruno
A1 Tomoe Kuroda
A1 Kenji Doya
A1 Keisuke Toyama
A1 Minoru Kimura
A1 Kazuyuki Samejima
A1 Hiroshi Imamizu
A1 Mitsuo Kawato
YR 2004
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/24/7/1660.abstract
AB Humans can acquire appropriate behaviors that maximize rewards on a trial-and-error basis. Recent electrophysiological and imaging studies have demonstrated that neural activity in the midbrain and ventral striatum encodes the error of reward prediction. However, it is yet to be examined whether the striatum is the main locus of reward-based behavioral learning. To address this, we conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of a stochastic decision task involving monetary rewards, in which subjects had to learn behaviors involving different task difficulties that were controlled by probability. We performed a correlation analysis of fMRI data by using the explanatory variables derived from subject behaviors. We found that activity in the caudate nucleus was correlated with short-term reward and, furthermore, paralleled the magnitude of a subject's behavioral change during learning. In addition, we confirmed that this parallelism between learning and activity in the caudate nucleus is robustly maintained even when we vary task difficulty by controlling the probability. These findings suggest that the caudate nucleus is one of the main loci for reward-based behavioral learning.