Selective mesoaccumbal pathway inactivation affects motivation but not reinforcement-based learning in macaques

Summary

Prof. Isa and his colleagues (Kyoto University, Japan), Prof. Vanduffel group (Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium), and Assoc. Prof. Kobayashi (National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Japan), have revealed through collaborative research that the mesoaccumbal pathway in primates is critical for high-effort motivation, but not for all forms of reinforcement-based learning. The results successfully demonstrated a new direction of primate brain science by combining advanced cognitive-behavioral tasks with the latest neural circuit manipulation technology (developed by Prof. Isa and his colleagues) and high-precision MRI measurement technology (developed by Prof. Vanduffel) for awake primates.

【Information on the outcome】

https://www.amed.go.jp/news/seika/kenkyu/20201020-01.html (AMED)

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