| Autor: |
Arsenault JT; Laboratory for Neuro-and Psychophysiology, Department of Neurosciences, KU Leuven Medical School, 3000, Leuven, Belgium. john.arsenault@kuleuven.be.; Massachusetts General Hospital, Martinos Ctr. for Biomedical Imaging, Charlestown, MA, 02129, USA. john.arsenault@kuleuven.be.; Leuven Brain Institute, KU Leuven, 3000, Leuven, Belgium. john.arsenault@kuleuven.be., Vanduffel W; Laboratory for Neuro-and Psychophysiology, Department of Neurosciences, KU Leuven Medical School, 3000, Leuven, Belgium. wim@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu.; Massachusetts General Hospital, Martinos Ctr. for Biomedical Imaging, Charlestown, MA, 02129, USA. wim@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu.; Leuven Brain Institute, KU Leuven, 3000, Leuven, Belgium. wim@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu.; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA. wim@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu. |
| Abstrakt: |
Practice improves perception and enhances neural representations of trained visual stimuli, a phenomenon known as visual perceptual learning (VPL). While attention to task-relevant stimuli plays an important role in such learning, Pavlovian stimulus-reinforcer associations are sufficient to drive VPL, even subconsciously. It has been proposed that reinforcement facilitates perceptual learning through the activation of neuromodulatory centers, but this has not been directly confirmed in primates. Here, we paired task-irrelevant visual stimuli with microstimulation of a dopaminergic center, the ventral tegmental area (VTA), in macaques. Pairing VTA microstimulation with a task-irrelevant visual stimulus increased fMRI activity and improved classification of fMRI activity patterns selectively for the microstimulation-paired stimulus. Moreover, pairing VTA microstimulation with a task-irrelevant visual stimulus improved the subject's capacity to discriminate that stimulus. This is the first causal demonstration of the role of neuromodulatory centers in VPL in primates. |
