Dopamine and cognitive control: the influence of spontaneous eyeblink rate and dopamine gene polymorphisms on perseveration and distractibility.

One fundamental problem of intelligent organisms pursuing goal-directed behavior is how to dynamically regulate the balance between maintenance and flexibility. The authors show that central dopaminergic activity, as indicated by spontaneous eyeblink rate and dopamine gene polymorphisms, plays an important role in the modulation of this balance. Seventy-two young adults were examined. Participants with high blink rates showed increased cognitive flexibility but decreased cognitive stability compared with participants with low blink rates. This pattern of results was even more pronounced for carriers of the DRD4 exon III 4/7 genotype, even though no main effects were found for DRD4 and COMT polymorphisms. Results converge with neuropsychological models that suggest a modulatory role of prefrontal dopaminergic activity for processes of cognitive control.

[1]  B. Milner.  Effects of Different Brain Lesions on Card Sorting: The Role of the Frontal Lobes , 1963 .

[2]  Jacob Cohen.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences , 1969, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[3]  C. Karson.  Spontaneous eye-blink rates and dopaminergic systems. , 1983, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[4]  A. Isen,et al.  The influence of affect on categorization. , 1984 .

[5]  Mark H Lewis,et al.  Blink rate and stereotyped behavior: Evidence for dopamine involvement? , 1985, Biological Psychiatry.

[6]  A. Isen,et al.  Positive affect facilitates creative problem solving. , 1987, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[7]  Helga Noice,et al.  Influence of Positive Affect upon Creative Thinking and Problem Solving in Children , 1988 .

[8]  O. Blin,et al.  Apomorphine-induced blinking and yawning in healthy volunteers. , 1990, British journal of clinical pharmacology.

[9]  R. Mailman,et al.  D1 and D2 dopamine receptors independently regulate spontaneous blink rate in the vervet monkey. , 1991, The Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics.

[10]  P. Niedenthal,et al.  An influence of positive affect on social categorization , 1992 .

[11]  T. Robbins,et al.  Contrasting mechanisms of impaired attentional set-shifting in patients with frontal lobe damage or Parkinson's disease. , 1993, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[12]  P. Lang.  International Affective Picture System (IAPS) : Technical Manual and Affective Ratings , 1995 .

[13]  J. Bodfish,et al.  Blink rate as an index of dopamine function in adults with mental retardation and repetitive behavior disorders. , 1995, American journal of mental retardation : AJMR.

[14]  M Linnoila,et al.  The association between the dopamine D4 receptor (D4DR) 16 amino acid repeat polymorphism and novelty seeking. , 1996, Molecular psychiatry.

[15]  Glenn F. Wilson,et al.  Psychophysiological responses to changes in workload during simulated air traffic control , 1996, Biological Psychology.

[16]  R. Ebstein,et al.  Dopamine D4 receptor (D4DR) exon III polymorphism associated with the human personality trait of Novelty Seeking , 1996, Nature Genetics.

[17]  M. Kleven,et al.  Differential effects of direct and indirect dopamine agonists on eye blink rate in cynomolgus monkeys. , 1996, The Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics.

[18]  I. Waldman,et al.  Dopamine DRD4 receptor polymorphism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder , 1998, Molecular Psychiatry.

[19]  J N Giedd,et al.  Lack of an association between a dopamine-4 receptor polymorphism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: genetic and brain morphometric analyses , 1998, Molecular Psychiatry.

[20]  D. Comings.  Polygenic inheritance and micro/minisatellites , 1998, Molecular Psychiatry.

[21]  S. Manuck,et al.  Human novelty-seeking personality traits and dopamine D4 receptor polymorphisms: a twin and genetic association study. , 1998, American journal of medical genetics.

[22]  S. Strakowski,et al.  Enhanced behavioral response to repeated d-amphetamine and personality traits in humans , 1998, Biological Psychiatry.

[23]  S. Nelson,et al.  Evidence that the dopamine D4 receptor is a susceptibility gene in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder , 1998, Molecular Psychiatry.

[24]  T. Belin,et al.  D2 and D4 dopamine receptor polymorphisms and personality. , 1998, American journal of medical genetics.

[25]  J. Swanson,et al.  Association of the dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) gene with a refined phenotype of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): a family-based approach , 1998, Molecular Psychiatry.

[26]  J. Kuhl,et al.  Volitional facilitation of difficult intentions: joint activation of intention memory and positive affect removes stroop interference , 1999 .

[27]  D. E. Redmond,et al.  Spontaneous Blink Rates Correlate with Dopamine Levels in the Caudate Nucleus of MPTP-Treated Monkeys , 1999, Experimental Neurology.

[28]  B. Brocke,et al.  Association between the dopamine D4 receptor (DRD4) exon III polymorphism and measures of Novelty Seeking in a German population , 1999, Molecular Psychiatry.

[29]  D. Levine,et al.  A neuropsychological theory of positive affect and its influence on cognition. , 1999, Psychological review.

[30]  R. Ebstein,et al.  Haplotype relative risk study of catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): association of the high-enzyme activity Val allele with ADHD impulsive-hyperactive phenotype. , 1999, American journal of medical genetics.

[31]  G. Barbato,et al.  Diurnal variation in spontaneous eye-blink rate , 2000, Psychiatry Research.

[32]  No association of the dopamine DRD4 receptor (DRD4) gene polymorphism with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the Irish population. , 2000 .

[33]  P. Asherson,et al.  Association and linkage of DRD4 and DRD5 with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in a sample of Turkish children , 2000, Molecular Psychiatry.

[34]  H. V. Van Tol,et al.  The dopamine D(4) receptor: one decade of research. , 2000, European journal of pharmacology.

[35]  J. Driver,et al.  Control of Cognitive Processes: Attention and Performance XVIII , 2000 .

[36]  R. Ebstein,et al.  Failure to replicate an excess of the long dopamine D4 exon III repeat polymorphism in ADHD in a family-based study. , 2000, American journal of medical genetics.

[37]  L. Foster,et al.  ADHD and the Nature of Self-Control. , 2000 .

[38]  R. Straub,et al.  Effect of COMT Val108/158 Met genotype on frontal lobe function and risk for schizophrenia , 2001, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[39]  J. Lieberman,et al.  Neurocognitive correlates of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism in chronic schizophrenia , 2002, Biological Psychiatry.

[40]  Jonathan D. Cohen,et al.  Computational perspectives on dopamine function in prefrontal cortex , 2002, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[41]  A. Malhotra,et al.  A functional polymorphism in the COMT gene and performance on a test of prefrontal cognition. , 2002, The American journal of psychiatry.

[42]  M. Posner,et al.  Assessing the molecular genetics of attention networks , 2002, BMC Neuroscience.

[43]  Vivian V. Valentin,et al.  The effects of positive affect and arousal on working memory and executive attention Neurobiology and computational models , 2002 .

[44]  L. Phillips,et al.  Positive mood and executive function: evidence from stroop and fluency tasks. , 2002, Emotion.

[45]  K. Lesch,et al.  No association between dopamine D4 receptor gene exon III and –521C/T polymorphism and Novelty Seeking , 2002, Molecular Psychiatry.

[46]  M. Oaksford,et al.  Emotional cognition: from brain to behaviour , 2002 .

[47]  N. Swerdlow,et al.  Prestimulus modification of the startle reflex: relationship to personality and physiological markers of dopamine function , 2003, Biological Psychology.

[48]  K. Lesch,et al.  Further evidence for a modulation of Novelty Seeking by DRD4 exon III, 5-HTTLPR, and COMT val/met variants , 2003, Molecular Psychiatry.

[49]  Thomas Goschke,et al.  Voluntary action and cognitive control from a cognitive neuroscience perspective , 2003 .

[50]  K. Lesch,et al.  Lack of Association between Polymorphisms of the Dopamine D4 Receptor Gene and Personality , 2003, Neuropsychobiology.

[51]  S. Debener,et al.  Dopamine D4 receptor exon III genotype influence on the auditory evoked novelty P3 , 2004, Neuroreport.

[52]  Edgar Erdfelder,et al.  GPOWER: a priori, post-hoc, and compromise power analyses for MS-DOS [Computer Program] , 2004 .

[53]  G. Dreisbach,et al.  How positive affect modulates cognitive control: reduced perseveration at the cost of increased distractibility. , 2004, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[54]  Jonathan D. Cohen,et al.  On the Control of Control: The Role of Dopamine in Regulating Prefrontal Function and Working Memory , 2007 .