Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Apr;134(2):101-118.
doi: 10.1037/bne0000361.

Dissociating the effects of dopamine D2 receptors on effort-based versus value-based decision making using a novel behavioral approach

Matthew R Bailey  1 , Eileen Chun  2 , Elke Schipani  2 , Peter D Balsam  2 , Eleanor H Simpson  3
Affiliations

Dissociating the effects of dopamine D2 receptors on effort-based versus value-based decision making using a novel behavioral approach

Matthew R Bailey et al. Behav Neurosci. 2020 Apr.

Abstract

Cost-benefit decision making is essential for organisms to adapt to their ever-changing environment. Most studies of cost-benefit decision making involve choice conditions in which effort and value are varied simultaneously. This prevents identification of the aspects of cost-benefit decision making that are affected by experimental manipulations. We developed operant assays to isolate the individual impacts of effort and value manipulations on cost-benefit decision making. In the concurrent effort choice (CEC) task, mice choose between exerting two distinct types of effort: the number of responses and the duration of a response, to earn the same reward. By parametrically varying response cost, psychometric functions are obtained that reflect how the two types of effort scale against one another. Direct manipulations of effort shift the functions. Because reward value is held constant in this task, differences in scaling of the two response types must be related to the effort manipulations. In the concurrent value choice (CVC) task, mice make the same type of response to earn rewards of different value (e.g., pellets vs. sucrose solutions). Here the effort required to earn one reward type is parametrically varied to obtain the psychometric function that scales the value of the two rewards into the number of responses subjects will pay to earn one reward over the other. Direct value manipulations shift these functions. We tested the effect of the dopamine D2 receptor antagonist, haloperidol, on performance in the CEC and CVC assays and found that D2R signaling is important for effort-based, but not value-based decision making. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
(A). Top, Subjects were trained to lever press in sessions where one lever came out and they had to make a required number of presses to earn milk rewards. Bottom, Shows how the schedules of reinforcement were increased over days (CRF, RR05, RR10, and RR20). (B). Top, Subjects were trained to lever hold in sessions where one lever came out and they had to hold the lever down for the required duration to earn milk rewards. Bottom, Shows how the schedules of reinforcement were increased over days (0.5s, 1s, 2s, 4s, 8s, 10s). (C). Schematic Representation of a CEC session. Sessions began with single lever trials in which the Press Lever (PL) and Hold Lever (HL) were each presented 5 times. Subjects were then presented with choice trials in which both levers were presented simultaneously for subjects to choose which lever to work on to obtain the milk reward. (D). The number of presses required on the PL varied over days (1, 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, or 160), while the hold requirement on the HL was either 5 (left) or 10 (right) seconds.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Performance in the Concurrent Effort Choice (CEC) task. (A) Proportion of hold choices in the CEC task in 2 different hold duration conditions. (B) Point of subjective equality (PSE) for subjects in the 2 different hold duration conditions. (C) PSE values for each individual subject in the 2 different hold conditions. (D) Latency to the first lever press in single lever press trials. (E) Latency to the first lever press in single lever hold trials (F). Press vigor = number of presses made per second during single lever press trials. (F) Hold efficiency = the hold requirement time/ time take to complete the requirement. All values represented are mean ± (SEM), except for (C), which depicts individual subject values. n = 16; The significance of main effects are depicted: **p < .01; ***p < .001; ****p < .0001.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Haloperidol effects in the CEC task. (A). proportion of hold choices in the CEC task following treatment with 0.1mg/kg and 0.2mg/kg haloperdiol. (B). Group point of subjective equality (PSE) for subjects under each drug condition. (C) PSE values for each individual subject in each condition. (D). Latency to the first lever press in single lever press trials. (E). Time taken to complete the single lever press trials. (F). Latency to the first lever press in single lever hold trials. (G) Time taken to complete the single lever hold trials. All values represented are mean ± (SEM), except for (C), which depicts individual subject values. n = 16; The significance of main effects and post-hoc multiple comparisons are depicted: **p < .01; ***p < .001; ****p < .0001.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
(A). Subjects were trained to lever press for pellets on one lever (Pellet Lever) and liquid sucrose on the opposite lever (Sucrose Lever) of the chamber. (B). Shows the schedules of reinforcement (CRF, RR05, RR10, and RR20) subjects were trained with to learn to work for pellets and sucrose. A single reward was available each day and was alternated every other day. (C). Schematic representation of the trial structure in the CVC task. Session begins with 10 single levers trials in which either the Sucrose Lever or Pellet Lever is presented. After the presentation of 10 single lever trials subjects were then given choice trials in which both levers were presented for subjects to choose which lever to work on to obtain reward. (D). Shows the daily requirements for the different outcomes. The number of presses required on the Pellet Lever varied over days (10, 20, 40, and 80), whereas the # of presses required on the Sucrose Lever was always 5 presses.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Reward quality alters value-based choice in the CVC task. (A) proportion of hold choices in the CVC task in 2 different sucrose concentration conditions. (B) point of subjective equality (PSE) for subjects in the 2 different sucrose concentration conditions. (C) individual subject PSE’s. (D). Latency to first press in single lever sucrose trials. (E). Time to complete single lever sucrose trials. (F). Latency to first press in single lever pellet trials. (G). Time to complete single lever pellet trials. All values represented are mean ± (SEM), except for (C), which depicts individual subject values. n = 16; The significance of main effects and post-hoc multiple comparisons are depicted: * p < 0.05; **p < .01; ***p < .001; ****p < .0001.
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
Reward devaluation in the CVC task. (A) proportion of hold choices in the CVC task for the different devaluation conditions. (B) group point of subjective equality (PSE) in the different devaluation conditions. (C) PSE values for individual subjects in the different devaluation conditions. (D) Latency to first press on single lever pellet trials. (E) Time to complete single lever pellet trials. All values represented are mean ± (SEM), except for (C), which depicts individual subject values. n = 16; The significance of main effects and post-hoc multiple comparisons are depicted: * p < 0.05; **p < .01; ***p < .001; ****p < .0001.
Figure 7.
Figure 7.
Haloperidol effects in the CVC task. (A). Shows the mean ± (SEM) proportion of hold choices in the 5% and 20% sucrose solution conditions after treatment with either vehicle (left) or 0.1mg/kg Haloperidol (right). (B) point of subjective equality (PSE). (C) latency to first press in the single lever sucrose trials for each sucrose concentration condition. (D). Time to complete single lever sucrose trials for each sucrose concentration condition. (E) latency to first press in the single lever pellet trials (F) Time to complete single lever pellet trials. All values represented are mean ± (SEM). n = 16; To avoid crowding the multi-part dense figures, the significance of main effects and post-hoc multiple comparisons are provided only in the text for all components except (B): ****p < .0001.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Andrew BJ, & Harris JA (2011). Summation of reinforcement rates when conditioned stimuli are presented in compound. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes, 37(4), 385–393. 10.1037/a0024553 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Arvanitogiannis A, & Shizgal P. (2008). The reinforcement mountain: allocation of behavior as a function of the rate and intensity of rewarding brain stimulation. Behavioral Neuroscience, 122(5), 1126–1138. 10.1037/a0012679 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Atalayer D, & Rowland NE (2009). Meal patterns of mice under systematically varying approach and unit costs for food in a closed economy. Physiology & Behavior, 98(1–2), 85–93. 10.1016/j.physbeh.2009.04.016 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bailey MR, Jensen G, Taylor K, Mezias C, Williamson C, Silver R, … Balsam PD (2015). A novel strategy for dissecting goal-directed action and arousal components of motivated behavior with a progressive hold-down task. Behavioral Neuroscience, 129(3), 269–280. 10.1037/bne0000060 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bailey MR, Simpson EH, & Balsam PD (2016). Neural substrates underlying effort, time, and risk-based decision making in motivated behavior. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 133, 233–256. 10.1016/j.nlm.2016.07.015 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

MeSH terms