Striatal Dopamine and Acetylcholine in Effort-Based Decision Making Tasks
Dopamine (DA) is critical for value based decision making. Previous studies have demonstrated that ventral striatal dopamine dynamics signal the value of effortful work. In particular, dopamine signals in the nucleus accumbens core (NAcc) have been shown to dynamically change with varying magnitudes of rewards without an obvious relationship to effort costs. Moreover, it remains unclear how dopamine in different striatal regions may reflect subjective utility that can offset subjective effort costs. Here, we developed an adaptive effort-based decision making task, where mice had to choose between a high effort, high reward option or a low effort, low reward option. Initial results indicate that animals are able to bias their choices towards sides that are not effortful. We continue to develop the task to assess indifference points for effort allocation using reward magnitude manipulations. Moreover, We will record neural dynamics in the medial dorsal striatum, lateral dorsal striatum, and substantia nigra pars compacta to understand how DA and acetylcholine(Ach) interactions shape effort allocation about subjective effort costs.