Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Distributional reinforcement learning in prefrontal cortex

Timothy H. Muller, James L. Butler, Sebastijan Veselic, View ORCID ProfileBruno Miranda, Timothy E.J. Behrens, Zeb Kurth-Nelson, Steven W. Kennerley
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.14.448422
Timothy H. Muller
1Department of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: timothymuller127@gmail.com
James L. Butler
1Department of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Sebastijan Veselic
1Department of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom
2Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Bruno Miranda
1Department of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Bruno Miranda
Timothy E.J. Behrens
2Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, UK
3Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford OX3 9DU, UK
4Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, UCL, London W1T 4JG, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Zeb Kurth-Nelson
5Max Planck University College London Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, University College London, London, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Steven W. Kennerley
1Department of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

Prefrontal cortex is crucial for learning and decision-making. Classic reinforcement learning (RL) theories centre on learning the expectation of potential rewarding outcomes and explain a wealth of neural data in prefrontal cortex. Distributional RL, on the other hand, learns the full distribution of rewarding outcomes and better explains dopamine responses. Here we show distributional RL also better explains prefrontal cortical responses, suggesting it is a ubiquitous mechanism for reward-guided learning.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted June 15, 2021.
Download PDF
Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Distributional reinforcement learning in prefrontal cortex
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Distributional reinforcement learning in prefrontal cortex
Timothy H. Muller, James L. Butler, Sebastijan Veselic, Bruno Miranda, Timothy E.J. Behrens, Zeb Kurth-Nelson, Steven W. Kennerley
bioRxiv 2021.06.14.448422; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.14.448422
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Distributional reinforcement learning in prefrontal cortex
Timothy H. Muller, James L. Butler, Sebastijan Veselic, Bruno Miranda, Timothy E.J. Behrens, Zeb Kurth-Nelson, Steven W. Kennerley
bioRxiv 2021.06.14.448422; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.14.448422

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Neuroscience
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (3688)
  • Biochemistry (7783)
  • Bioengineering (5673)
  • Bioinformatics (21267)
  • Biophysics (10574)
  • Cancer Biology (8170)
  • Cell Biology (11929)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (6757)
  • Ecology (10394)
  • Epidemiology (2065)
  • Evolutionary Biology (13853)
  • Genetics (9702)
  • Genomics (13063)
  • Immunology (8136)
  • Microbiology (19976)
  • Molecular Biology (7841)
  • Neuroscience (43032)
  • Paleontology (318)
  • Pathology (1278)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2258)
  • Physiology (3350)
  • Plant Biology (7221)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1311)
  • Synthetic Biology (2000)
  • Systems Biology (5533)
  • Zoology (1127)