Impulsivity, a personality characteristic of many psychiatric disorders including substance abuse, involves a preference for immediate rewards over delayed rewards and a disregard of long-term consequences. This application hypothesizes that dysregulation of the ventral tegmental (VTA) dopaminergic reward prediction system leads to a reward hypersensitivity in orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) systems of stimulus evaluation and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) systems of behavior monitoring among highly impulsive subjects. The proposed experiments investigate reward sensitivity in stimulus evaluation and action monitoring utilizing the temporal resolution of ERPs and spatial resolution of fMRI. The experiments employ normal college students screened and separated into high and low impulsive groups, based on the Barrett Impulsivity Scale, participating in a modified flanker task with rewarding and punishing stimuli testing for reduced ACC activation to errors in impulsive subjects, in a passive S1/S2 paradigm testing for enhanced OFC activation to the prediction of reward in impulsive subjects, and an SI/S2 incentive flanker paradigm examining interactions between OFC and ACC in a reward-motivated decision task.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
Type
Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F31)
Project #
1F31DA018498-01A1
Application #
6932667
Study Section
Human Development Research Subcommittee (NIDA)
Program Officer
Gordon, Harold
Project Start
2005-03-01
Project End
2007-02-28
Budget Start
2005-03-01
Budget End
2006-02-28
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
2005
Total Cost
$26,009
Indirect Cost
Name
Rice University
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
050299031
City
Houston
State
TX
Country
United States
Zip Code
77005
Potts, Geoffrey F; Martin, Laura E; Kamp, Siri-Maria et al. (2011) Neural response to action and reward prediction errors: Comparing the error-related negativity to behavioral errors and the feedback-related negativity to reward prediction violations. Psychophysiology 48:218-28
Martin, Laura E; Potts, Geoffrey F (2011) Medial frontal event-related potentials and reward prediction: do responses matter? Brain Cogn 77:128-34
Martin, Laura E; Potts, Geoffrey F; Burton, Philip C et al. (2009) Electrophysiological and hemodynamic responses to reward prediction violation. Neuroreport 20:1140-3
Martin, Laura E; Potts, Geoffrey F (2009) Impulsivity in Decision-Making: An Event-Related Potential Investigation. Pers Individ Dif 46:303