Serotonin selectively modulates reward value in human decision-making.

Ben Seymour, Nathaniel D Daw, Jonathan P Roiser, Peter Dayan, Ray Dolan

Journal: The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience 2012;32(17):5833-42

PMID: 22539845

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Abstract

Establishing a function for the neuromodulator serotonin in human decision-making has proved remarkably difficult because if its complex role in reward and punishment processing. In a novel choice task where actions led concurrently and independently to the stochastic delivery of both money and pain, we studied the impact of decreased brain serotonin induced by acute dietary tryptophan depletion. Depletion selectively impaired both behavioral and neural representations of reward outcome value, and hence the effective exchange rate by which rewards and punishments were compared. This effect was computationally and anatomically distinct from a separate effect on increasing outcome-independent choice perseveration. Our results provide evidence for a surprising role for serotonin in reward processing, while illustrating its complex and multifarious effects.

Address: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London-UCL, London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom. [email protected]

DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0053-12.2012

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MeSH Terms: Brain, Brain Mapping, Conditioning, Operant, Decision Making, Dietary Supplements, Double-Blind Method, Electric Stimulation, Female, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Oxygen, Pain, Pain Measurement, Probability, Punishment, Reward, Serotonin, Statistics as Topic, Surveys and Questionnaires, Tryptophan