Dopaminergic basis of the psychosis-prone personality investigated with functional magnetic resonance imaging of procedural learning

Ettinger, Ulrich, Corr, Philip J., Mofidi, Ardeshier, Williams, Steven C. R. and Kumari, Veena (2013) Dopaminergic basis of the psychosis-prone personality investigated with functional magnetic resonance imaging of procedural learning. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7. ISSN 1662-5161

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Abstract

Previous evidence shows a reliable association between psychosis-prone (especially schizotypal) personality traits and performance on dopamine (DA)-sensitive tasks (e.g., prepulse inhibition and antisaccade). Here, we used blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI and an established procedural learning (PL) task to examine the dopaminergic basis of two aspects of psychosis-proneness (specific schizotypy and general psychoticism). Thirty healthy participants (final N = 26) underwent fMRI during a blocked, periodic sequence-learning task which, in previous studies, has been shown to reveal impaired performance in schizophrenia patients given drugs blocking the DA D2 receptor subtype (DRD2), and to correspond with manipulation of DA activity and elicit fronto-striatal-cerebellar activity in healthy people. Psychosis-proneness was indexed by the Psychoticism (P) scale of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised (EPQ-R; 1991) and the Schizotypal Personality Scale (STA; 1984). EPQ-R Extraversion and Neuroticism scores were also examined to establish discriminant validity. We found a positive correlation between the two psychosis-proneness measures (r = 0.43), and a robust and unique positive association between EPQ-R P and BOLD signal in the putamen, caudate, thalamus, insula, and frontal regions. STA schizotypy score correlated positively with activity in the right middle temporal gyrus. As DA is a key transmitter in the basal ganglia, and the thalamus contains the highest levels of DRD2 receptors of all extrastriatal regions, our results support a dopaminergic basis of psychosis-proneness as measured by the EPQ-R Psychoticism.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2013 Ettinger, Corr, Mofidi, Williams and Kumari. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and subject to any copyright notices concerning any third-party graphics etc.
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	05 Feb 2014 13:42
Last Modified:	04 Aug 2023 11:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/45811
DOI:	10.3389/fnhum.2013.00130

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