Vellani, V;
de Vries, LP;
Gaule, A;
Sharot, T;
(2020)
A selective effect of dopamine on information-seeking.
eLife
, 9
, Article e59152. 10.7554/eLife.59152.
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Abstract
Humans are motivated to seek information from their environment. How the brain motivates this behavior is unknown. One speculation is that the brain employs neuromodulatory systems implicated in primary reward-seeking, in particular dopamine, to instruct information-seeking. However, there has been no causal test for the role of dopamine in information-seeking. Here, we show that administration of a drug that enhances dopamine function (dihydroxy-L-phenylalanine; L-DOPA) reduces the impact of valence on information-seeking. Specifically, while participants under Placebo sought more information about potential gains than losses, under L-DOPA this difference was not observed. The results provide new insight into the neurobiology of information-seeking and generates the prediction that abnormal dopaminergic function (such as in Parkinson's disease) will result in valence-dependent changes to information-seeking.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | A selective effect of dopamine on information-seeking |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.7554/eLife.59152 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.59152 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2020, Vellani et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited. |
| Keywords: | decision-making, dopamine, human, information-seeking, neuroscience, reward |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Experimental Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10117668 |
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