Dopamine modulation in a basal ganglio-cortical
network of working memory
Aaron Gruber Peter Dayan Boris S Gutkin Sara A Solla
NIPS 2003
Abstract
Dopamine exerts two classes of effects on the sustained neural
activity in pre-frontal cortex underlying working memory. Direct
release in the cortex increases the contrast of prefrontal neurons,
enhancing the robustness of storage. Release of dopamine in the
striatum is associated with salient stimuli and makes medium spiny
neurons bistable and, through the effects of the outputs of these
neurons on prefrontal cortex, indirectly gates access to working
memory and additionally damps sensitivity to noise. Existing models
have treated dopamine in either structure, and basal ganglia gating of
working memory; in this paper, we explore the overall joint effects,
showing in a model of a memory-guided saccade task, how dopamine's
actions lead to working memory that is selective for salient input and
has increased robustness to distraction.
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