Abstract
Extinction learning allows animals to withhold voluntary actions that are no longer related to reward and so provides a major source of behavioral control. Although such learning is thought to depend on dopamine signals in the striatum, the way the circuits mediating goal-directed control are reorganized during new learning remains unknown. Here, by mapping a dopamine-dependent transcriptional activation marker in large ensembles of striatal projection neurons (SPNs) expressing dopamine receptor type 1 (D1-SPNs) or 2 (D2-SPNs) in mice, we demonstrate an extensive and dynamic D2- to D1-SPN trans-modulation across the dorsal striatum that is necessary for updating previous goal-directed learning. Our findings suggest that D2-SPNs suppress the influence of outdated D1-SPN plasticity within functionally relevant striatal territories to reshape volitional action.
Footnotes
↵* m.matamales{at}unsw.edu.au (M.M); j.bertran{at}unsw.edu.au (J.B.G)
Citation: Matamales M, McGovern AE, Mi JD, Mazzone SB, Balleine BW, Bertran-Gonzalez, J (2019) D1 and D2 systems converge in the striatum to update goal-directed learning. bioRxiv, 780346. doi: 10.1101/780346
Funding: This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (DE160101275 to J.B.G and DP190102511 to J.B.G and M.M.)
Competing interests: The authors have no competing interests.