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Related Experiment Video

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Bidirectional modulation of reward-guided decision making by dopamine.

Ana Antonia Dias Maile1, Theo O J Gruendler2, Adrian G Fischer2

  • 1Biological Psychology of Decision Making, Institute of Experimental Psychology, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Universitätsstraße 1, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany. ana.dias.maile@uni-duesseldorf.de.

Psychopharmacology
|May 29, 2025
PubMed
Summary

Dopamine influences how we weigh reward attributes in decisions, but not the strategy used to combine them. Dopamine manipulations bidirectionally altered choices based on reward magnitude and probability.

Keywords:
AmisulprideComputational modelingDecision makingDecision strategyDopamineL-DOPAPharmacologyReward-guided decision makingRisky decision making

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Decision Science
  • Psychopharmacology

Background:

  • Dopamine is crucial for reward-guided decision-making involving multi-attribute choices.
  • Existing research highlights dopamine's role in risk preferences, but its influence on strategy arbitration remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the impact of pharmacological dopamine modulation on decision-making strategies in healthy individuals.
  • To determine if dopamine affects how individuals arbitrate between different choice strategies.

Main Methods:

  • A double-blind, within-subject design with 31 healthy males.
  • Participants underwent a reward-guided decision task under placebo, amisulpride (dopamine D2/D3 antagonist), or L-DOPA (dopamine precursor).
  • Hierarchical regressions and Bayesian models analyzed dopamine's effect on decisions and strategies.

Main Results:

  • Dopaminergic interventions altered the weighting of reward attributes (magnitude, probability) in choices.
  • These effects were bidirectional: amisulpride decreased, L-DOPA increased attribute influence.
  • No changes were observed in the decision strategy for integrating attributes or in statistically optimal behavior.

Conclusions:

  • Dopamine modulates the influence of value parameters on choice selection.
  • This modulation occurs independently of the decision strategy used to integrate choice attributes.