PaL Lab postdoc Bronagh has published a new paper from her doctoral research investigating the effects of dopaminergic medication on reinforcement learning in Parkinson's disease. The authors found that dopamine reduced learning rates for negative outcomes and also reduced dorsal striatal sensitivity to negative prediction errors. These dopamine-related (within-patient) reductions in negative learning rates were furthermore found to relate to shifts in approach/avoidance behaviour and striatal activations in a subsequent decision-making task.
The open-access paper can be read here: https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awz276
