New paper by Vanessa Scholz in Neuropsychopharmacology

Our study titled “Cortical dopamine reduces the impact of motivational biases governing automated behaviour” is now published online in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology. Using a COMT inhibitor, tolcapone, known to selectively enhance frontal dopamine, we examined whether selectively enhancing frontal dopamine would: a) lead to an adaptive suppression of Pavlovian biases or b) result in a global reduction of Pavlovian biases in a valenced Go/NoGo learning task.

Our results indicated a global, unspecific decrease of Pavlovian biases, with performance increases on trials required to overcome the bias, but worse performance on trials for which the bias is known to be helpful. These findings highlight the role of dopamine in regulating motivational processes involved in top-down control of automated behavior, while also opening up exciting new avenues for studying the underlying mechanisms driving symptoms of addiction or OCD, disorders often associated with overhabitualized behaviour.

An official preview of the paper can be found here and a pdf version in our publications section. And if you want to know more, please get in touch with Vanessa or Hanneke!