Glossary // Glossary term Theoretical
Reward prediction error
The difference between the reward that was expected and the reward that was received, a quantity that learning models use to update expectations. Recordings in primates showed that the firing of midbrain dopamine neurons increases after unexpectedly good outcomes, shifts to cues that predict reward, and dips when an expected reward is omitted. The concept is used to interpret findings on anticipation and pleasure, for example in music, but dopamine signals are not a direct measure of felt pleasure. People use music to change, maintain and release emotional states. This note reviews meta-analyses of music and stress, studies of how people regulate mood with music, and what the evidence cannot yet say about resolution. What moving in time with others does to people: evidence that synchrony increases affiliation and cooperation, that group dance raises pain thresholds, and that musical peaks engage the brain's reward system. The works the definition rests on, with the level of evidence each was appraised at. (1997). A neural substrate of prediction and reward. doi:10.1126/science.275.5306.1593 Supports the description of dopamine neuron firing as consistent with a reward prediction error signal. Based on animal recordings; it says nothing directly about human subjective pleasure. (2011). Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. doi:10.1038/nn.2726 Supports the claim that peak emotional responses to music were accompanied by striatal dopamine release, with caudate and nucleus accumbens linked to anticipation and experience. Small imaging sample of self-selected music; not about dance music or crowds.Where the site uses it
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