Dissociation between active and observational learning from positive and negative feedback in Parkinsonism

  • Feedback to both actively performed and observed behaviour allows adaptation of future actions. Positive feedback leads to increased activity of dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra, whereas dopamine neuron activity is decreased following negative feedback. Dopamine level reduction in unmedicated Parkinson’s Disease patients has been shown to lead to a negative learning bias, i.e. enhanced learning from negative feedback. Recent findings suggest that the neural mechanisms of active and observational learning from feedback might differ, with the striatum playing a less prominent role in observational learning. Therefore, it was hypothesized that unmedicated Parkinson’s Disease patients would show a negative learning bias only in active but not in observational learning. In a between-group design, 19 Parkinson’s Disease patients and 40 healthy controls engaged in either an active or an observational probabilistic feedback-learning task. For both tasks, transfer phases aimed to assess the bias to learn better from positive or negative feedback. As expected, actively learning patients showed a negative learning bias, whereas controls learned better from positive feedback. In contrast, no difference between patients and controls emerged for observational learning, with both groups showing better learning from positive feedback. These findings add to neural models of reinforcement-learning by suggesting that dopamine-modulated input to the striatum plays a minor role in observational learning from feedback. Future research will have to elucidate the specific neural underpinnings of observational learning.

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Metadaten
Author:Stefan KobzaGND, Stefano FerreaGND, Alfons SchnitzlerGND, Bettina PollokGND, Martin SüdmeyerGND, Christian BellebaumORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hbz:294-72052
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050250
Parent Title (English):PLoS one
Publisher:Public Library of Science
Place of publication:San Francisco
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2020/06/04
Date of first Publication:2012/11/21
Publishing Institution:Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsbibliothek
Tag:Behavior; Decision making; Dopamine; Human learning; Learning; Neostriatum; Neurons; Parkinson disease
Volume:7
Issue:11, Artikel e50250
First Page:e50250-1
Last Page:e50250-8
Institutes/Facilities:Institut für Kognitive Neurowissenschaft, Abteilung Neuropsychologie
open_access (DINI-Set):open_access
Licence (English):License LogoCreative Commons - CC BY 4.0 - Attribution 4.0 International