Highlights•Vertebrates are remarkable for their ability to select and execute motor
skill.•Motor skill is defined by flexibility of execution while obtaining reliable outcomes.•Basal …

Behavior is readily classified into patterns of movements with inferred common goals—
actions. Goals may be discrete; movements are continuous. Through the careful study of …

Pain decreases the activity of many ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine (DA) neurons,
yet the underlying neural circuitry connecting nociception and the DA system is not …

For goal-directed behaviour it is critical that we can both select the appropriate action and
learn to modify the underlying movements (for example, the pitch of a note or velocity of a …

INTRODUCTION Animal behavior is mediated by molecular, cellular, and circuit
components of the brain. However, because many proteins are broadly expressed, it has …

Purkinje cells (PCs) provide the sole output from the cerebellar cortex. Although PCs are
well characterized on many levels, surprisingly little is known about their axon collaterals …

The basal ganglia (BG) are a collection of interconnected subcortical nuclei that participate
in a great variety of functions, ranging from motor programming and execution to procedural …

Highlights•Behavioral reinforcement is neural reinforcement.•We propose a framework
where reinforcement acts on neural population dynamics with different time courses.• …

The ability to adjust one's behavioral strategy in complex environments is at the core of
cognition. Doing so efficiently requires monitoring the reliability of the ongoing strategy and …

The classic basal ganglia circuit model asserts a complete segregation of the two striatal
output pathways. Empirical data argue that, in addition to indirect-pathway striatal projection …