TY - JOUR AU - Michely, Jochen AU - Viswanathan, Shivakumar AU - Hauser, Tobias U. AU - Delker, Laura AU - Dolan, Raymond J. AU - Grefkes, Christian TI - The role of dopamine in dynamic effort-reward integration JO - Neuropsychopharmacology VL - 45 IS - 9 SN - 0893-133X CY - Basingstoke PB - Nature Publishing Group84063 M1 - FZJ-2020-01760 SP - 1448-1453 PY - 2020 AB - When deciding to act, the neurotransmitter dopamine is implicated in a valuation of prospective effort and reward. However, its role in dynamic effort-reward integration during action, a process central to everyday behaviour, remains unclear. In a placebo-controlled, within-subject, study, we probed the impact of increasing brain dopamine levels (150 mg of levodopa) and blocking dopamine receptors (1.5 mg of haloperidol) in the context of a novel dynamic effort task in healthy human subjects. We show that modulating homoeostatic dopamine balance distinctly alters implicit and explicit effort allocation as a function of instantaneous reward. Pharmacologically boosting dopamine enhanced motor vigour, reflected in an implicit increase in effort allocation for high rewards. Conversely, pharmacological blockade of dopamine attenuated sensitivity to differences in reward context, reflected in reduced strategic effort discounting. These findings implicate dopamine in an integration of momentary physical experience and instantaneous reward, suggesting a key role of dopamine in acting to maximise reward on the fly. LB - PUB:(DE-HGF)16 C6 - pmid:32268344 UR - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000526237400001 DO - DOI:10.1038/s41386-020-0669-0 UR - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/875000 ER -