Principles of pleasure prediction: specifying the neural dynamics of human reward learning

Accumulating evidence from nonhuman primates suggests that midbrain dopamine cells code reward prediction errors and that this signal subserves reward learning in dopamine-receiving brain structures. In this issue of Neuron, McClure et al. and O'Doherty et al. use event-related fMRI to provide some of the strongest evidence to date that the reward prediction error model of dopamine system activity applies equally well to human reward learning.