Dopamine and cognitive control: The influence of spontaneous eyeblink rate, DRD4 exon III polymorphism and gender on flexibility in set-shifting

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

Converging evidence suggests a modulatory role of dopamine in cognitive control. We investigated the influence of two correlates of dopaminergic activity, the spontaneous eyeblink rate and the DRD4 exon III polymorphism, and the potential impact of gender on flexibility in an attentional set-shifting paradigm. The objective of the study was to confirm previous findings of an association between high eyeblink rates and increased cognitive flexibility. These findings were replicated in 87 healthy volunteers this time using a continuous variable for eyeblink rates instead of a dichotomized variable. The interaction between eyeblink rate and DRD4 found in the previous study was lower and failed significance. Analysis of the collapsed sample of n = 150 revealed a main effect of gender and an interaction of gender and eyeblink rate on cognitive control. The complete prediction model explained 26% of the total variance. These data suggest that (1) the eyeblink rate is a reliable predictor of dopamine-mediated flexibility of cognitive control and (2) it is useful to include gender as predictor in future studies of dopaminergic modulation of cognitive control.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)155-162
Number of pages8
JournalMolecular Brain Research
Volume1131
Publication statusPublished - 2007
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

Scopus 33845996621
ORCID /0000-0002-9426-5397/work/161409121

Keywords

Keywords

  • Dopamine Cognitive control Eyeblink rate (EBR) Gender DRD4 exon III polymorphism