Dopaminergic modulation of positive expectations for goal-directed action: evidence from Parkinson’s disease
Open accessAbstract
Parkinson's disease (PD) impairs the control of movement and cognition, including the planning of action and its consequences. This provides the opportunity to study the dopaminergic influences on the perception and awareness of action. Here we examined the perception of the outcome of a goal-directed action made by medicated patients with PD. A visuomotor task probed the integration of sensorimotor signals with the positive expectations of outcomes (Self priors), which in healthy adults bias perception toward success in proportion to trait optimism. We tested the hypotheses that (i) the priors on the perception of the consequences of one's own actions differ between patients and age- and sex-matched controls, and (ii) that these priors are modulated by the levodopa dose equivalent (LDEs) in patients. There was no overall difference between patients and controls in the perceptual priors used. However, the precision of patient priors was inversely related to their LDE. Patients with high LDE showed more accurate priors, representing predictions that were closer to the true distribution of performance. Such accuracy has previously been demonstrated when observing the actions of others, suggesting abnormal awareness of action in these patients. These results confirm a link between dopamine and the positive expectation of the outcome of one's own actions, and may have implications for the management of PD.
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Previous research shows improvements in patients taking medications acting on the dopaminergic system.
“previous research showing improvements in patients taking medications acting on the dopaminergic system (Tomassini et al., 2019; Wolpe et al., 2015).”
From Predictive coding in neuropsychiatric disorders: a systematic transdiagnostic review. (2025) · cites this paper as Wolpe et al., 2015
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“This observation is in contrast with previous research showing improvements in patients taking medications acting on the dopaminergic system (Tomassini et al., 2019; Wolpe et al., 2015).”
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- Authors
- Wolpe, N., Nombela, C., & Rowe, J. B.
- Affiliations
- MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Wolpe, Noham
- Venue
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2015-10-08
- Volume
- 6
- Pages
- 1514-1514
- ISSN
- 1664-1078 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4597135
- OpenAlex
- W1849609025
- Cited by
- 18
- References
- 72
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 3 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 1.41
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Frontiers in Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Apollo (University of Cambridge) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Wellcome Trust (103838)
- Medical Research Council (MC-A060-5PQ30)
- James S. McDonnell Foundation
- Gates Cambridge Trust
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Neurology › Parkinson's Disease Mechanisms and Treatments
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Motor Control and Adaptation
- Keywords
- Parkinson's disease, dopamine, positive expectations, goal-directed action, outcome prediction, sensorimotor integration, visuomotor task, dispositional optimism
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