Differential roles of human striatum and amygdala in associative learning

Top Cited Papers
Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The authors employ the computational learning approach that is widely used in the striatum to examine the contributions of the amygdala, and find that these two structures have complementary roles in aversive learning. Although the human amygdala and striatum have both been implicated in associative learning, only the striatum's contribution has been consistently computationally characterized. Using a reversal learning task, we found that amygdala blood oxygen level–dependent activity tracked associability as estimated by a computational model, and dissociated it from the striatal representation of reinforcement prediction error. These results extend the computational learning approach from striatum to amygdala, demonstrating their complementary roles in aversive learning.