bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.04.325175; this version posted October 5, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. Rational Inattention and Tonic Dopamine John G. Mikhael1;2∗, Lucy Lai1, Samuel J. Gershman3 1Program in Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115 2MD-PhD Program, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115 3Department of Psychology and Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 ∗Corresponding Author Correspondence: john
[email protected] 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.04.325175; this version posted October 5, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. 1 Abstract 2 Slow-timescale (tonic) changes in dopamine (DA) contribute to a wide variety of processes in reinforce- 3 ment learning, interval timing, and other domains. Furthermore, changes in tonic DA exert distinct 4 effects depending on when they occur (e.g., during learning vs. performance) and what task the subject 5 is performing (e.g., operant vs. classical conditioning). Two influential theories of tonic DA|the average 6 reward theory and the Bayesian theory in which DA controls precision|have each been successful at 7 explaining a subset of empirical findings. But how the same DA signal performs two seemingly distinct 8 functions without creating crosstalk is not well understood. Here we reconcile the two theories under the 9 unifying framework of `rational inattention,' which (1) conceptually links average reward and precision, 10 (2) outlines how DA manipulations affect this relationship, and in so doing, (3) captures new empirical 11 phenomena.