In changing environments, animals must adaptively select actions to achieve their goals. In tasks involving goal-directed action selection, striatal neural activity has been shown to represent the value of competing actions. Striatal representations of action value could potentially bias responses toward actions of higher value. However, no study to date has demonstrated the direct effect of distinct striatal pathways in goal-directed action selection. We found that transient optogenetic stimulation of dorsal striatal dopamine D1 and D2 receptor–expressing neurons during decision-making in mice introduced opposing biases in the distribution of choices. The effect of stimulation on choice was dependent on recent reward history and mimicked an additive change in the action value. Although stimulation before and during movement initiation produced a robust bias in choice behavior, this bias was substantially diminished when stimulation was delayed after response initiation. Together, our data suggest that striatal activity is involved in goal-directed action selection.

Lung-Hao Tai*, A Moses Lee*, Nora Benavidez, Antonello Bonci, Linda Wilbrecht, Transient stimulation of distinct subpopulations of striatal neurons mimics changes in action value Nature Neuroscience 15, 1281–1289, (2012) doi:10.1038/nn.3188 (Full Text)