[Lewisham]

The elaborate on the Schultz paper, dopaminergic reward feedback mechanism is for unexpected reward only. Repeated stimulation depreciates the neuronal signals.

As I'm still working through this stuff, and am certainly no psychologist or neurobiologist, did I say anything above that was contradictory to this? It sounds like you know more than I do about the subject (I'm dabbling in it for my Computer Science thesis) and I'm always paranoid that I'm overstating or overgeneralizing some experiment result.

[sterling312]

Oh no, you did not contradict it at all. It is one of the vital point that was pointed out in the paper, and I wanted to make sure anybody else who don't having interest in reading the actual paper to have an opportunity to get this particular point across. I'm a researcher in a neuroscience lab, and this is one of the foundational paper into modern understanding of reward mechanism. Kudos to you for linking it here :)

[slurgfest]

Dopamine doesn't just spike at unexpected "rewards," though. It can also spike at surprising loud noises, etc.