The Role of Dopamine in Attentional and Memory Biases for Emotional Information

• Published in: The American journal of psychiatry 2007-10, Vol.164 (10), p.1603-1609
• Main Authors: Gibbs, Ayana A., Naudts, Kris H., Spencer, Edgar P., David, Anthony S.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Attention - drug effects; Attention - physiology; Biological and medical sciences; Dopamine - physiology; Dopamine Antagonists - pharmacology; Emotions; Emotions - physiology; Gender differences; Human subjects; Humans; Male; Medical sciences; Memory; Memory - drug effects; Memory - physiology; Neurological disorders; Neurosciences; Neurotransmitters; Perception - drug effects; Perception - physiology; Placebos; Plasma; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Psychotic Disorders - diagnosis; Psychotic Disorders - psychology; Psychotropic drugs; Reaction Time - drug effects; Reaction Time - physiology; Recognition (Psychology) - drug effects; Recognition (Psychology) - physiology; Sample size; Schizophrenia; Single-Blind Method; Studies; Sulpiride - analogs & derivatives; Sulpiride - pharmacology; Task Performance and Analysis; Visual Perception - drug effects; Visual Perception - physiology
• ISSN: 0002-953X; 1535-7228
• DOI: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2007.06081241

Objective: Cognitive models suggest that biased processing of emotional information may play a role in the genesis and maintenance of psychotic symptoms. The role of dopamine and dopamine antagonists in the processing of such information remains unclear. The authors investigated the effect of a dopamine antagonist on perception of, and memory for, emotional information in healthy volunteers. Method: Thirty-three healthy male volunteers were randomly assigned to a single-blind intervention of either a single dose of the dopamine D 2 D 3 antagonist amisulpride or placebo. An attentional blink task and an emotional memory task were then administered to assess the affective modulation of attention and memory, respectively. Results: A significant interaction was observed between stimulus valence and drug on recognition memory accuracy; further contrasts revealed enhanced memory for aversive-arousing compared with neutral stimuli in the placebo but not the amisulpride group. No effect of amisulpride was observed on the perception of emotional stimuli. Conclusions: Amisulpride abolished the enhanced memory for emotionally arousing stimuli seen in the placebo group but had no effect on the perception of such stimuli. These results suggests that dopamine plays a significant role in biasing memory toward emotionally salient information and that dopamine antagonists may act by attenuating this bias.