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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Oct 1.
Published in final edited form as: Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2014 May 10;0:90–100. doi: 10.1016/j.nlm.2014.05.002

Figure 1. Brain responses to reward expectation and receipt.

Figure 1

A. In Macaque monkeys, spiking activity in dopaminergic midbrain neurons increases with the expected value (probability x magnitude) of the reward that is predicted by a conditioned stimulus, while the response during the receipt of the reward scales with the prediction error, i.e. the received minus the expected reward (Panel adapted from Tobler et al. (2005)). B. A similar activation pattern is observed when measuring fMRI activation in the ventral striatum (results only shown for the right VS; Panel adapted from Abler et al. (2006)). These responses are in line with the predictions of normative models of reinforcement learning (Montague et al., 1996; Schultz et al., 1997).