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Abstract
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 apomorphine (D1/D2 agonist) and measure the change in neurological indices of novelty processing. In separate drug and placebo sessions, participants completed a von Restorff task. Apomorphine speeded and potentiated the novelty-elicited N2, an Event-Related Potential (ERP) component thought to index early aspects of novelty detection, and caused novel-font words to be better recalled. Apomorphine also decreased the amplitude of the novelty-P3a. An increase in D1/D2 receptor activation thus appears to potentiate neural sensitivity to novel stimuli, causing this content to be better encoded.
Highlights
The ability to respond accurately and rapidly to novel stimuli relies on a cascade of neurological mechanisms that underlie perception, attention, learning and memory [1]
We investigated the role of dopamine D1/D2 receptor activation in the processing of novel stimuli
EEG was recorded while participants completed the task and we isolated the novelty-induced anterior N2 and P3a Event-Related Potential (ERP) components
Summary
The ability to respond accurately and rapidly to novel stimuli relies on a cascade of neurological mechanisms that underlie perception, attention, learning and memory [1]. The N2 generally appears to reflect processing involved in the automatic detection and recognition of novel stimuli [5,6], and the component is greatly reduced after a single repetition of a novel stimulus [7]. It has been decomposed into three subcomponents: the N2a, N2b and N2c [2]. The N2a/mismatch negativity has a fronto-central maximum distribution and is thought to reflect an automatic neural response to an auditory outlier [9,10], whereas the N2b commonly precedes the P3a component and is commonly elicited in the visual oddball task [11,12]. The N2c, which commonly precedes the P3b component, is associated with classification tasks [13]
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