Dopamine and reward-related learning
Dopamine and reward-related learning
Dopamine and reward-related learning describes how the intellectual influence of behaviorism declined in the middle of the twentieth century as descriptions of behavioral phenomena that violated the putative laws of learning accumulated. Incentive theory along with an ethological perspective that emphasized animals’ specific behavioral adaptations for survival in their natural environment provided an alternative. Thus, rewarding stimuli produce incentive learning, the acquisition of neutral stimuli of an increased ability to elicit approach and other responses. The reward-related learning effects of food were shown to depend on dopamine and dopamine was implicated in avoidance learning. Results suggest that in untrained animals, tested while in a dopamine-depleted state, conditioned incentive stimuli fail to acquire the ability to elicit approach and other responses; in trained animals tested while in a dopamine-depleted state, conditioned incentive stimuli gradually lose their ability to elicit approach and other responses.
Keywords: avoidance learning, behaviorism, conditioned incentive stimuli, dopamine, incentive theory, learning, reinforcement, reward
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