Motivational salience is the motivational value placed on cues paired with reward. It is important for basic learning process, condition formation, and reward-based decision making. Aberrant motivational salience might be resulted from abnormal dopamine release which is one of the features for schizophrenia. Given the involvement of AKT1 in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia and the importance of AKT1 in the dopamine downstream signaling cascade and reward prediction error, male Akt1 heterozygous mutant mice and their wild-type littermate controls were used to examine the role of Akt1 in the regulation of motivational salience and reward-based choices. In experiment 1, both Het and WT mice were trained to learn pairings of lever and food induce Pavlovian-conditioned approach of sign-tracking and goal-tracking behavior and followed by a conditioned reinforcement test to see whether the lever-CS were attributed with motivational salience. During the pairing, our data revealed that WT mice have more sign-tracking behaviors compared to Het mice at the early stage. In the conditioned reinforcement test, no genotypic difference was found. In experiment 2, a 2-choice dynamic foraging task with different reward probability was conducted and each mouse had to learn and choose the high reward choice based on trial and error. Their trial-by-trial choices were further analyzed to elaborate parameters for reward prediction error and reward sensitivity. Our results showed Het mice learned the task faster than controls and WT mice made more incorrect responses when the reward probabilities were altered. Data collection and analyses are still in progress. Our preliminary results suggest the involvement of Akt1 in the motivational salience and reward-based choice. Findings from this study might enhance our understanding of Akt1 in motivational salience and shed light on the explanation of aberrant salience and delusional beliefs in schizophrenic patients.