Abstract: Dopamine has long been tightly associated with aspects of reinforcement learning and motivation in simple situations where there are a limited number of stimuli to guide behaviour and constrained range of outcomes. In naturalistic situations, however, there are many potential cues and foraging strategies that could be adopted, and it is critical that animals determine what might be behaviourally relevant in such complex environments. This requires not only detecting discrepancies with what they have recently experienced, but also identifying si...
(read more)
Topics: 
Cognitive psychology
Neuroscience