{"doi":"10.7554/elife.62583","title":"Slowly evolving dopaminergic activity modulates the moment-to-moment probability of reward-related self-timed movements","abstract":"Clues from human movement disorders have long suggested that the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a role in motor control, but how the endogenous dopaminergic system influences movement is unknown. Here, we examined the relationship between dopaminergic signaling and the timing of reward-related movements in mice. Animals were trained to initiate licking after a self-timed interval following a start-timing cue; reward was delivered in response to movements initiated after a criterion time. The movement time was variable from trial-to-trial, as expected from previous studies. Surprisingly, dopaminergic signals ramped-up over seconds between the start-timing cue and the self-timed movement, with variable dynamics that predicted the movement/reward time on single trials. Steeply rising signals preceded early lick-initiation, whereas slowly rising signals preceded later initiation. Higher baseline signals also predicted earlier self-timed movements. Optogenetic activation of dopamine neurons during self-timing did not trigger immediate movements, but rather caused systematic early-shifting of movement initiation, whereas inhibition caused late-shifting, as if modulating the probability of movement. Consistent with this view, the dynamics of the endogenous dopaminergic signals quantitatively predicted the moment-by-moment probability of movement initiation on single trials. We propose that ramping dopaminergic signals, likely encoding dynamic reward expectation, can modulate the decision of when to move.","journal":"eLife","year":2021,"id":152672,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":74,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9607,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":556808,"name":"Giulia Spedicato","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":576832,"name":"Ye Hong","orcid":"0000-0002-5014-5027","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":229431,"name":"Fangmiao Sun","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":151125,"name":"Yulong Li","orcid":"0000-0002-9166-9919","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":556212,"name":"John A. Assad","orcid":"0000-0002-7689-5336","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":556211,"name":"Allison E. Hamilos","orcid":"0000-0001-9486-0017","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":100,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:43:34.972031Z","pmid":"34939925","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}