Animals make predictions to guide their behavior and update those predictions through experience. Transient increases in dopamine (DA) are thought to be critical signals for updating predictions. However, it is unclear how this mechanism handles a wide range of behavioral timescales—from seconds or less (for example, if singing a song) to potentially hours or more (for example, if hunting for food). Here we report that DA transients in distinct rat striatal subregions convey prediction errors based on distinct time horizons. DA dynamics systematically accelerated from ventral to dorsomedial to dorsolateral striatum, in the tempo of spontaneous fluctuations, the temporal integration of prior rewards and the discounting of future rewards. This spectrum of timescales for evaluative computations can help achieve efficient learning and adaptive motivation for a broad range of behaviors.

动物做出预测来指导它们的行为，并通过经验更新这些预测。多巴胺 (DA) 的瞬时增加被认为是更新预测的关键信号。然而，目前尚不清楚这种机制如何处理广泛的行为时间尺度——从几秒或更短（例如，如果唱歌）到可能几个小时或更长（例如，如果寻找食物）。在这里，我们报告不同的大鼠纹状体亚区域中的 DA 瞬变传达了基于不同时间范围的预测误差。 DA 动态从腹侧纹状体到背内侧再到背外侧纹状体，以自发波动的节奏、先前奖励的时间整合和未来奖励的贴现系统地加速。这种评估计算的时间尺度可以帮助实现广泛行为的高效学习和适应性动机。