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Dopamine Enhances Expectation of Pleasure in Humans
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Open access funded by Wellcome Trust
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Figure 1
Experimental Task and Results
(A) On day 1, participants rated stimuli before pharmacological manipulation (phase 1). They then completed an imagination task under placebo 1 (phase 2A) or L-DOPA (phase 2B; placebo 2 for order control group). On day 2, participants returned to the laboratory and completed a decision-making task (phase 3) and a final rating task (phase 4). For full details, see Supplemental Experimental Procedures .
(B) Change in mean-corrected ratings from phase 1 to phase 4. Ratings of estimated happiness increased only for stimuli previously imagined under L-DOPA.
(C) Difference scores (placebo 1 − L-DOPA; placebo 1 − placebo 2) for the change in mean-corrected ratings from phase 1 to phase 4. Ratings of estimated happiness increased from phase 1 to phase 4 for stimuli imagined under L-DOPA relative to placebo 1 only for selected stimuli. As expected, there was no difference in rating change for stimuli imagined under placebo 1 relative to placebo 2 in the control group for either selected stimuli or rejected stimuli.
Error bars in (B) and (C) represent standard error of the mean. ∗p < 0.05.
Summary
Human 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.