I just recently learned (indirectly from this source) that long-term potentiation/depression only takes place when you have large/small amounts of dopamine present at the relevant synapse. However, my understanding is that early in the process of learning behavior, dopamine isnt released until after a reward is received. If Im a monkey who has to look one way or the other to get some juice, by the time I drink the juice and get the resulting dopamine, the neurons I used to move my eye are presumably not firing any more, right? So then how does this work? Is it that: 1. Theres a slow bootstrapping process. Something like: first the monkey has to learn that the taste of juice leads to the reward of sugar. Then the monkey has to learn that the sight of juice correlates to the taste, and extend the chain one step further, etc., etc., such that by the time you actually have the monkey in the lab theres a very small inferential step needed to plug into a larger reward chain. 2. The neurons dont actually stop firing. There is some sort of system in play that keeps the neurons firing afterwards, waiting for fluctuations in dopamine level to tell it whether or not it should increase or decrease long term potentiation. 3. Something I havent thought of?
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 15:42:23 +0000
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