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Related Experiment Video

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The Joint Effect of Social Comparison and Social Distance on Evaluation of Intertemporal Choice Outcomes in Event-related Potential Studies

The Joint Effect of Social Comparison and Social Distance on Evaluation of Intertemporal Choice Outcomes in Event-related Potential Studies

Published on: August 25, 2023

Dopamine, corticostriatal connectivity, and intertemporal choice.

Andrew S Kayser¹, Daicia C Allen, Ana Navarro-Cebrian

¹Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94143, USA. akayser@gallo.ucsf.edu

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience

|July 6, 2012

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

This study shows that increasing dopamine levels in the brain can reduce impulsive choices by improving decision-making related to delayed rewards. Tolcapone, a medication, enhanced the selection of larger, delayed rewards in healthy individuals.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Decision Science
Pharmacology

Background:

Value-based decisions are crucial for optimizing behavior.
Impulsivity, or steep discounting of delayed rewards, is linked to frontal lobe damage and behavioral disorders.
Lower frontal cortex dopamine is hypothesized to impair corticostriatal function, increasing impulsivity.

Purpose of the Study:

To directly test the hypothesis that raising cortical dopamine levels attenuates impulsive choice.
To investigate the effects of tolcapone on delay discounting behavior and associated neural activity.

Main Methods:

A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study was conducted.
Healthy subjects performed a delay discounting task after receiving either tolcapone or a placebo.
Brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Main Results:

Tolcapone significantly increased the choice of delayed monetary rewards compared to placebo.
This effect correlated with increased Blood-Oxygen-Level-Dependent (BOLD) activity in the left ventral putamen and anterior insula.
Tolcapone altered corticostriatal connectivity, decreasing coherence between the ventral putamen and pregenual cingulate cortex.

Conclusions:

Increasing cortical dopamine levels can reduce impulsive choice.
This effect is mediated by changes in corticostriatal function, specifically involving the ventral putamen and anterior insula.
The findings support a role for dopamine in regulating value-based decision-making and impulse control.