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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 11, 2026

Three Laboratory Procedures for Assessing Different Manifestations of Impulsivity in Rats
09:12

Three Laboratory Procedures for Assessing Different Manifestations of Impulsivity in Rats

Published on: March 17, 2019

Dopamine, time, and impulsivity in humans.

Alex Pine1, Tamara Shiner, Ben Seymour

  • 1Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom. a.pine@ucl.ac.uk

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience
|July 2, 2010
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Dopamine plays a key role in impulsivity by affecting how we value future rewards. Enhancing dopamine function increases impulsivity, leading to excessive discounting of delayed rewards.

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Last Updated: Jun 11, 2026

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Published on: August 12, 2015

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Behavioral Economics
  • Psychology

Background:

  • Disordered dopamine neurotransmission is linked to impulsivity in various conditions like addiction and ADHD.
  • Current theories on dopamine function do not fully explain hypersensitivity to temporal delays observed in these disorders.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the role of dopamine in modulating the subjective value of future rewards based on their timing.
  • To bridge the explanatory gap in understanding dopamine's role in pathological temporal delay hypersensitivity.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized an intertemporal choice task to assess decision-making under varying reward delays.
  • Employed pharmacological manipulation to enhance dopamine activity.
  • Measured the neural representation of temporal discounting in the striatum.

Main Results:

  • Pharmacologically enhancing dopamine activity significantly increased impulsivity.
  • Increased dopamine function amplified the effect of delay on reward value (temporal discounting).
  • Neural activity in the striatum reflected this enhanced temporal discounting.

Conclusions:

  • Dopamine critically influences human decision-making by modulating the value attributed to temporally distant rewards.
  • A hyperfunctioning dopamine system contributes to excessive discounting of delayed rewards, explaining key behavioral aberrations.
  • Findings reveal a novel mechanism for dopamine's role in impulsivity and related disorders.