Role of the primate ventral striatum as a neural hub bridging option valuation and action selection.

Overview

1. Institute of Medicine, University of Tsukuba,Tsukuba, Ibaraki Japan
2. Transborder Medical Research Center, University of Tsukuba,Tsukuba, Ibaraki Japan
3. Center for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior, Kyoto University,Inuyama, Aichi Japan

Abstract

Making appropriate decisions relies on the brain’s capacity to evaluate the expected outcomes of available options and select the most rewarding action. The ventral striatum and midbrain dopamine neurons have been implicated in the option valuation process, consistent with the brain’s reinforcement learning theory in which these brain structures encode and update value representations of expected outcomes. Extending beyond this framework, we found that the dopamine–ventral striatum system plays a more proactive role in action selection. We recorded single-unit activity from ventral striatum neurons in macaque monkeys as they sequentially evaluated an option, decided whether to perform an action to choose it, and expressed that motor action. The activity of these neurons initially reflected the value of the option but gradually shifted to reflect monkey’s action selection, as if the ventral striatum translates the value information into the action. Moreover, optogenetic facilitation of dopamine input to the ventral striatum as well as electrical stimulation of this region altered monkey’s action selection. Our findings reveal a previously unappreciated function of the ventral striatum as a neural hub that bridges option valuation and action selection, and demonstrate the contribution of dopamine in the process leading to action selection within this region.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Code

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Code availability

No custom codes or algorithms were developed for this study. All analyses were performed using standard MATLAB (MathWorks) functions, and the analysis procedures are fully described in the ‘Methods’ section. All codes used in this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Data

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• figshare:30526061, at figshare; found in DataCite

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Source data are provided with this paper.

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Version 1, 30 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 9 authors, 2 keywords, 10 MeSH terms, 3 funders, 57 references.

Cite

This paper

Nejime, M., Yun, M., Wang, Y., Kawai, T., Kunimatsu, J., Yamada, H., Inoue, K.-i., Takada, M., & Matsumoto, M. (2026). Role of the primate ventral striatum as a neural hub bridging option valuation and action selection. Nature communications, 17(1), 2501. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70634-6

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