For the last three decades our best models of reinforcement learning in AI and neuroscience have focused almost entirely on learning to predict the average future reward, he says.

But this doesnt reflect real life when playing the lottery, for example, people expect to either win big, or win nothing no one is thinking about getting the average outcome.

The work has significance in some key areas. For one, it could lift the lid on whats happening neurologically with conditions like addiction and depression.

If some neurons are reducing dopamine, or, as Dabney puts it, thinking in pessimistic terms, there may be a situation in which they take the reins, shifting the brains entire outlook to a pessimistic one. Seems like a pretty good characterisation of what depression involves, he says.

The finding is also a rare example of AI shedding light on the way the brain works, validating the work being done by researchers to get AI to work just as the brain does. And with researchers expecting this to be a more common occurrence over the next decade, there could be an acceleration in the understanding of the way the brain works, and the subsequent advancement of AI.

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Could we ever create an AI as smart as the human brain? - Telegraph.co.uk