Uploaded August 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
Show notes: braininspired.co/podcast/112
Patreon support: patreon.com/braininspired
Free Video Series: Open Questions in AI and Neuroscience:
braininspired.co/open
Ali and Ben discuss the ever-expanding discoveries about the roles dopamine plays for our cognition. Dopamine is known to play a role in learning - dopamine (DA) neurons fire when our reward expectations aren't met, and that signal helps adjust our expectation. Roughly, DA corresponds to a reward prediction error. The reward prediction error has helped reinforcement learning in AI develop into a raging success, specially with deep reinforcement learning models trained to out-perform humans in games like chess and Go. But DA likely contributes a lot more to brain function. We discuss many of those possible roles, how to think about computation with respect to neuromodulators like DA, how different time and spatial scales interact, and more.
0:00 – Intro
5:02 – Virtual Dopamine Conference
9:56 – History of dopamine’s roles
16:47 – Dopamine circuits
21:13 – Multiple roles for dopamine
31:43 – Deep learning panel discussion
50:14 – Computation and neuromodulation
Show notes: braininspired.co/podcast/112
Patreon support: patreon.com/braininspired
Free Video Series: Open Questions in AI and Neuroscience:
braininspired.co/open
Ali and Ben discuss the ever-expanding discoveries about the roles dopamine plays for our cognition. Dopamine is known to play a role in learning - dopamine (DA) neurons fire when our reward expectations aren't met, and that signal helps adjust our expectation. Roughly, DA corresponds to a reward prediction error. The reward prediction error has helped reinforcement learning in AI develop into a raging success, specially with deep reinforcement learning models trained to out-perform humans in games like chess and Go. But DA likely contributes a lot more to brain function. We discuss many of those possible roles, how to think about computation with respect to neuromodulators like DA, how different time and spatial scales interact, and more.
0:00 – Intro
5:02 – Virtual Dopamine Conference
9:56 – History of dopamine’s roles
16:47 – Dopamine circuits
21:13 – Multiple roles for dopamine
31:43 – Deep learning panel discussion
50:14 – Computation and neuromodulation
