Fig. 3: TS dopamine signals physical salience of a potential threat.
From: Dopamine in the tail of the striatum facilitates avoidance in threat–reward conflicts
a, The dopamine sensor signals in TS (n = 19 animals) during the monster task (average of ten monster sessions, mean ± s.e.m.). b, The average responses of kernel regression models (mean ± s.e.m.) in TS and DLS (Methods). The dopamine responses to monster in TS were significantly positive (P = 1.8 × 10−4, 0.4–2 s after movement onset, Wilcoxon signed rank test), stronger than water responses (P = 2.0 × 10−3, two-sided Wilcoxon signed rank test) and stronger than in DLS (P = 0.016, two-sided Wilcoxon rank sum test). The water responses in DLS were significantly stronger than in TS (P = 5.5 × 10−3, two-sided Wilcoxon rank sum test). The center of box plot shows median, the edges are the 25th and 75th percentiles and the whiskers are the most extreme data points. c, The dopamine response patterns (mean ± s.e.m.) on day 1. The average dopamine responses to a big monster (0–1 s) were significantly higher than responses to a small monster (P = 0.042, two-sided t-test, n = 3 animals for each). The center of box plot shows the median, the edges are the 25th and 75th percentiles and the whiskers are the most extreme data points. d, The monster’s size modulated the avoidance rate on day 1 (P = 0.042, F(2,17) = 3.95, one-way ANOVA, n = 6 animals for each; P = 5.6 × 10−3, small versus big, two-sided t-test, n = 6 animals for each). The error bars represent the s.e.m. e, The average TS dopamine responses to the monster were positively correlated with individual variability of avoidance rate (average of ten monster sessions, R = 0.69, P = 1.1 × 10−3, Pearson’s correlation coefficient). DA, dopamine. f, The dopamine responses 0.1–1.1 s after monster movement in reward acquisition trials and avoidance trials (average of ten monster sessions, mean ± s.e.m.). Right: the dopamine responses at monster movement were significantly higher in avoidance than in reward acquisition trials (P = 8.7 × 10−3, F(1,18) = 6.9 for successful reward acquisition, P = 7.4 × 10−4, F(1,18) = 15.8 for trial number, P = 7.6 × 10−3, F(1,18) = 7.2 for successful reward acquisition × trial number interaction, three-way ANOVA; P = 5.3 × 10−4, two-sided paired t-test). g, The changes of neural responses 0.1–1.1 s after monster movement across sessions (P = 1.1 × 10−5, n = 19 animals, beta coefficient for linear regression of responses with session number, two-sided t-test). TS-DA and DLS-DA denote dopamine sensor signals in TS and DLS, respectively. The monster icons indicate when the monster starts to move. The water drop icons indicate when the animals obtain water reward. *P < 0.05.
