Abstract
SummaryHuman action is strongly influenced by expectations of pleasure. Making decisions, ranging from which products to buy to which job offer to accept, requires an estimation of how good (or bad) the likely outcomes will make us feel [1]. Yet, little is known about the biological basis of subjective estimations of future hedonic reactions. Here, we show that administration of a drug that enhances dopaminergic function (dihydroxy-L-phenylalanine; L-DOPA) during the imaginative construction of positive future life events subsequently enhances estimates of the hedonic pleasure to be derived from these same events. These findings provide the first direct evidence for the role of dopamine in the modulation of subjective hedonic expectations in humans.
Highlights
An unresolved question is whether neuromodulatory systems implicated in value-based decision making, in particular dopamine (DA), impact on the generation of subjective estimations of future hedonic reactions
Drugs enhancing dopaminergic function have been shown to augment a striatal signal that expresses reward prediction errors during instrumental learning, thereby increasing the likelihood of choosing stimuli associated with greater monetary gains [5]
We have recently shown that during imagination of future events, activity in the heavily dopaminergic innervated striatum tracks subjects’ estimates of the expected pleasure to be derived from those events [7]. Given this set of findings, we reasoned that if dopamine modulates reward prediction, its enhancement during imagination of future events should impact on subjective estimations of future pleasure to be derived from those events
Summary
Given this set of findings, we reasoned that if dopamine modulates reward prediction, its enhancement during imagination of future events should impact on subjective estimations of future pleasure to be derived from those events. On day 2 (by which time L-DOPA had been fully metabolized and eliminated), participants were presented with 40 pairs of destinations to which they had given equal ratings in phase 1.
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