| A Neural Substrate of Prediction and Reward (2008) | |||||||||||||
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| The capacity to predict future events permits a creature to detect, model, and manipulate the causal structure of its interactions with its environment. Behavioral experiments suggest that learning is driven by changes in the expectations about future salient events such as rewards and punishments. Physiological work has recently complemented these studies by identifying dopaminergic neurons in the primate whose fluctuating output apparently signals changes or errors in the predictions of future salient and rewarding events. Taken together, these findings can be understood through quantitative theories of adaptive optimizing control. An adaptive organism must be able to predict future events such as the presence of mates, food, and danger. For any creature, the features of its niche strongly constrain the time scales for prediction that are likely to be useful for its survival. Predictions give an animal time to prepare behavioral reactions | |||||||||||||
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