Authors
Dimitrios J Palidis, Heather R McGregor, Andrew Vo, Penny A MacDonald, Paul L Gribble
Publication date
2021/7/1
Journal
Journal of Neurophysiology
Volume
126
Issue
1
Pages
47-67
Publisher
American Physiological Society
Description
Dopamine signaling is thought to mediate reward-based learning. We tested for a role of dopamine in motor adaptation by administering the dopamine precursor levodopa to healthy participants in two experiments involving reaching movements. Levodopa has been shown to impair reward-based learning in cognitive tasks. Thus, we hypothesized that levodopa would selectively impair aspects of motor adaptation that depend on the reinforcement of rewarding actions. In the first experiment, participants performed two separate tasks in which adaptation was driven either by visual error-based feedback of the hand position or binary reward feedback. We used EEG to measure event-related potentials evoked by task feedback. We hypothesized that levodopa would specifically diminish adaptation and the neural responses to feedback in the reward learning task. However, levodopa did not affect motor adaptation in …
Total citations
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