The striatum is essential for learning which actions lead to reward and for implementing
those actions. Decades of experimental and theoretical work have led to several influential …

Anhedonia is a core symptom of major depressive disorder (MDD), the neurobiological
mechanisms of which remain poorly understood. Despite decades of speculation regarding …

The prefrontal cortex has long been thought to subserve both working memory (the holding
of information online for processing) and executive functions (deciding how to manipulate …

Although placebos have long been considered a nuisance in clinical research, today they
represent an active and productive field of research and, because of the involvement of …

Aesthetic responses to visual art comprise multiple types of experiences, from sensation and
perception to emotion and self-reflection. Moreover, aesthetic experience is highly …

Multiple signals for reward—hedonic impact, motivation, and learned associative prediction—
are funneled through brain mesocorticolimbic circuits involving the nucleus accumbens and …

The ability to predict favorable outcomes using environmental cues is an essential part of
learned behavior. Dopamine neurons in the midbrain encode such stimulus-reward …

The authors explore the division of labor between the basal ganglia-dopamine (BG-DA)
system and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in decision making. They show that a primitive …

Reinforcement learning (RL) is the behavioral process of learning the values of actions and
objects. Most models of RL assume that the dopaminergic prediction error signal drives …

A comparative and integrated account is provided of the evidence that implicates
frontostriatal systems in neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders. Specifically, we …