Dopamine Neurons Evaluate Natural Fluctuations in Performance Quality

SUMMARY

Many motor skills are learned by comparing ongoing behavior to internal performance benchmarks. Dopamine neurons encode performance error in behavioral paradigms where error is externally induced, but it remains unknown if dopamine also signals the quality of natural performance fluctuations. Here we recorded dopamine neurons in singing birds and examined how spontaneous dopamine spiking activity correlated with natural fluctuations in ongoing song. Antidromically identified basal ganglia-projecting dopamine neurons correlated with recent, and not future, song variations, consistent with a role in evaluation, not production. Furthermore, dopamine spiking was suppressed following the production of outlying vocal variations, consistent with a role for active song maintenance. These data show for the first time that spontaneous dopamine spiking can evaluate natural behavioral fluctuations unperturbed by experimental events such as cues or rewards.