Striatal dopamine signals internal states related to behavioral performance over prolonged timescales in monkeys
Output Details
Description
Behavioral performance waxes and wanes over minutes to hours, driven by slowly evolving internal states whose neural basis is poorly defined. Dopamine is the natural candidate, but its two roles have never been reconciled: fast reward prediction errors (RPEs) over seconds, and a slow motivational role inferred from lesions and pharmacology. Recent work treats these as dissociable; we show the opposite. Using fast-scan cyclic voltammetry across sensors chronically implanted in the caudate nucleus (CN) and putamen of two rhesus monkeys performing a saccade task, we found single-trial dopamine release tracked slowly evolving performance states, dissociable from trial-by-trial RPE and reward rate, biased toward future over past performance, and concentrated in the CN. Thus, one dopamine signal carries both fast prediction errors and slow internal states.
Identifier (DOI)
10.64898/2026.06.24.733789
