NEURAL MECHANISMS OF MOTIVATION AND REWARD

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In our studies of motivation, we have found that monkeys work faster and with fewer errors when a cue indicates that a juice reward will be delivered immediately after the next correct response than when the cue indicates that additional trials will be needed. Single neurons in the ventral striatum signal the rewarded trial when it follows one or more unrewarded trials, thus providing a neural signal that could reinforce complex behavior. The neuronal responses are directly related to the associative learning of the meaning of the cue in a complex behavioral task. Specifically, the neurons keep track of whether the animal is at the beginning of or in the course of a behavioral sequence that ultimately leading to reward. Neurons located just 3-4 mm away in area TE of the temporal cortex fail to show this effect. Thus we hypothesize that dopaminergic input provides signals sensitive to long-term progress through a planned or expected series of tasks which culminated in reward.