Tricomi et al. - Human habit learning & posterior dorsolateral striatum

Question 1

What were the two main goals of Tricomi et al.?

Answer 1

1. Determine if instrumental responding in humans can become habitual (persistence with devalued outcome)
2. Uncover neural mechanisms for control/development of habitual behaviour (focus on dorsal lateral striatum (DLS))

Question 2

What task was used to measure the outcomes in Tricomi et al.?

Answer 2

Free-operant task:
- Humans were trained to press a button to receive a rewarding outcome on an interval (rat treatment, hell yeah)
- Assessed performance in an extinction test after outcome devaluation

Question 3

Generally, result of Tricomi et al., study?

Answer 3

• More intensive task training (repitition) = insensitive to changes in outcome value (basically, habit formation)
• DLS & right posterior putamen/globus pallidus involved in this

Results are basically the same as before, but this is just a clear example of an experimental paper that shows these results- there are no clear deviations