Dopamine, effort, and decision making: theoretical comment on Bardgett et al. (2009)

Forebrain dopamine (DA) systems are thought to be a critical component of the brain circuitry regulating behavioral activation, work output during instrumental behavior, and effort-related decision making. Tasks that offer animals choices between alternatives that require different degrees of effort can be used to assess effort-related choice behavior. Rats treated with DA antagonists, or with accumbens DA depletions, tend to show reduced selection of instrumental behaviors with high response requirements, and instead they choose to engage in food-seeking behaviors that involve less effort. The accompanying article by Bardgett et al. describes a novel effort-discounting task that involves the modification of a previously developed T-maze choice procedure (Salamone et al., 1994). Each arm of the maze contained different magnitudes of food reinforcement, and in order to obtain the higher magnitude reward, the rats had to climb a barrier in that arm of the maze. With training, rats were able to climb successively higher barriers to obtain the larger amount of food, and the choice between the high barrier arm and the no-barrier arm with the smaller reward served as a template for assessing the effects of dopaminergic drugs. D1 and D2 family antagonists, as well as the DA releasing agent amphetamine, were able to produce a bidirectional modulation of choice behavior, while drugs that act on D3 receptors were ineffective. These studies illustrate features of the neurochemical regulation of effort-related decision making, and may have implications for the understanding of both natural and pathological features of motivation.