Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Eisenegger, Christoph
• Pedroni, Andreas
• Rieskamp, Jörg
• Zehnder, Christian
• Ebstein, Richard
• Fehr, Ernst
• Knoch, Daria
• Sensi, Stefano L.

Titel

DAT1 polymorphism determines L-DOPA effects on learning about others' prosociality

Ist Teil von

• PloS one, 2013-07, Vol.8 (7), p.e67820-e67820

Ort / Verlag

United States: Public Library of Science

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Despite that a wealth of evidence links striatal dopamine to individualś reward learning performance in non-social environments, the neurochemical underpinnings of such learning during social interaction are unknown. Here, we show that the administration of 300 mg of the dopamine precursor L-DOPA to 200 healthy male subjects influences learning about a partners' prosocial preferences in a novel social interaction task, which is akin to a repeated trust game. We found learning to be modulated by a well-established genetic marker of striatal dopamine levels, the 40-bp variable number tandem repeats polymorphism of the dopamine transporter (DAT1 polymorphism). In particular, we found that L-DOPA improves learning in 10/10R genoype subjects, who are assumed to have lower endogenous striatal dopamine levels and impairs learning in 9/10R genotype subjects, who are assumed to have higher endogenous dopamine levels. These findings provide first evidence for a critical role of dopamine in learning whether an interaction partner has a prosocial or a selfish personality. The applied pharmacogenetic approach may open doors to new ways of studying psychiatric disorders such as psychosis, which is characterized by distorted perceptions of others' prosocial attitudes.