A Mosaic of Cost-benefit Control over Cortico-striatal Circuitry

Overview

Journal Trends Cogn Sci

Date 2021 Jun 14

PMID 34120845

Citations 26

Authors

Andrew Westbrook

Michael J Frank

Roshan Cools

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Dopamine contributes to cognitive control through well-established effects in both the striatum and cortex. Although earlier work suggests that dopamine affects cognitive control capacity, more recent work suggests that striatal dopamine may also impact on cognitive motivation. We consider the emerging perspective that striatal dopamine boosts control by making people more sensitive to the benefits versus the costs of cognitive effort, and we discuss how this sensitivity shapes competition between controlled and prepotent actions. We propose that dopamine signaling in distinct cortico-striatal subregions mediates different types of cost-benefit tradeoffs, and also discuss mechanisms for the local control of dopamine release, enabling selectivity among cortico-striatal circuits. In so doing, we show how this cost-benefit mosaic can reconcile seemingly conflicting findings about the impact of dopamine signaling on cognitive control.

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