Sensation seeking is a heritable personality trait that has been reliably linked to behavioral disorders. The dopamine system has been hypothesized to contribute to variations in sensation seeking between different individuals, and both experimental and observational studies in humans and nonhuman animals provide evidence for the involvement of the dopamine system in sensation-seeking behavior....

Rats infected with the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii exhibit reduced avoidance of predator odours. This behavioural change is likely to increase transmission of the parasite from rats to cats. Here, we show that infection with T. gondii increases the propensity of the infected rats to make more impulsive choices, manifested as delay aversion in an intertemporal choice task. Concomitantly...

Dopamine-containing neurons have been implicated in reward and decision making. One element of the supporting evidence is that cocaine, like other drugs that increase dopaminergic neurotransmission, powerfully potentiates reward seeking. We analyze this phenomenon from a novel perspective, introducing a new conceptual framework and new methodology for determining the stage(s) of neural processi...

Despite much research, it remains unclear if dopamine is directly involved in novelty detection or plays a role in orchestrating the subsequent cognitive response. This ambiguity stems in part from a reliance on experimental designs where novelty is manipulated and dopaminergic activity is subsequently observed. Here we adopt the alternative approach: we manipulate dopamine activity using apomo...

Perinatal brain injuries, including hippocampal lesions, cause lasting changes in dopamine function in rodents, but it is not known if this occurs in humans. We compared adults who were born very preterm with perinatal brain injury to those born very preterm without perinatal brain injury, and age-matched controls born at full term using [18F]-DOPA PET and structural MRI. Dopamine synthesis cap...

Expected reward impacts behavior and neuronal activity in brain areas involved in sensorimotor processes. However, where and how reward signals affect sensorimotor signals is unclear. Here, we show evidence that reward-dependent modulation of behavior depends on normal dopamine transmission in the striatum. Monkeys performed a visually guided saccade task in which expected reward gain was diffe...

Many rewards in life require taking risks, and the decision to take such risks often must be made under stressful circumstances—whether one is a stockbroker, a surgeon, or just a commuter in rush-hour traffic. Stress hormones affect prefrontal brain regions and dopaminergic pathways involved in decision making (Moghaddam & Jackson, 2004; Wang et al., 2005). As people age, prefrontal brain regio...

Antipsychotic drugs currently in use have been developed as antidopaminergic agents; that is, normalization of psychotic symptoms occurs through a reduction in dopaminergic activity, usually by blockade of postsynaptic dopamine receptors. Based on this current understanding of the mechanism of action of antipsychotic drugs, it is suggested that one physiological role of the dopaminergic system ...

Methamphetamine use among adolescents is a significant social and public health concern. Despite increased awareness of methamphetamine use among younger people, relatively little research has examined the effects of adolescent methamphetamine use compared to adult use. Thus, much remains to be learned about how methamphetamine alters adolescent brain function and behavior. In this article we r...

Economic decision making is a complex process of integrating and comparing various aspects of economically relevant choice options. Neuroeconomics has made important progress in grounding these aspects of decision making in neural systems and the neurotransmitters therein. The dopaminergic and serotoninergic brain systems have been identified as key neurotransmitter systems involved in economic...