ArticleFrontiers in behavioral neuroscience2009
Dopamine, behavioral economics, and effort.
Article in Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 147 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
147 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 275 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of caffeine on neuroinflammation in anxiety and depression: a systematic review of rodent studies.Translational psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Acetylcholine and noradrenaline enhance foraging optimality in humans.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Trial
- Computational Mechanisms of Effort and Reward Decisions in Patients With Depression and Their Association With Relapse After Antidepressant Discontinuation.JAMA psychiatry · 2020Trial
- The dopamine augmenter L-DOPA does not affect positive mood in healthy human volunteers.PloS one · 2012Trial
- Amping up effort: effects of d-amphetamine on human effort-based decision-making.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2011Trial
- Hyperdopaminergic States Bias Explorations-Exploitation Trade-Off in Foraging and Impair Survival.The European journal of neuroscience · 2026Article
- A Behavioral Economic Characterization of the Impact of the COVID-19 Quarantine on Reinforcer Diversity, Behavior, and Health.Perspectives on behavior science · 2026Review
- Article
- Rapid dopaminergic signatures in movement: Reach vigor reflects reward prediction error and learned expectation.Science advances · 2026Article
- Rapid Dopaminergic Signatures in Movement: Reach Vigor Reflects Reward Prediction Error and Learned Expectation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Neurobiological foundations and clinical relevance of effort-based decision-making.Brain imaging and behavior · 2024Review
- Subcallosal area 25: Its responsivity to the stress hormone cortisol and its opposing effects on appetitive motivation in marmosets.Neurobiology of stress · 2024Review
- Dopamine, activation of ingestion and evaluation of response efficacy: a focus on the within-session time-course of licking burst number.Psychopharmacology · 2024Review
- Decoding Post-Viral Fatigue: The Basal Ganglia's Complex Role in Long-COVID.Neurology international · 2024Review
- Motivational Vigor in Parkinson's Disease Requires the Short and Long Duration Response to Levodopa.Movement disorders : official journal of the Movement Disorder Society · 2024Article
- A Multi-task Platform for Profiling Cognitive and Motivational Constructs in Humans and Nonhuman Primates.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- The value of time in the invigoration of human movements when interacting with a robotic exoskeleton.Science advances · 2023Article
- Effort-related decision making and cannabis use among college students.Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology · 2023Article
- Prenatal dexamethasone exposure alters effort decision making and triggers nucleus accumbens and anterior cingulate cortex functional changes in male rats.Translational psychiatry · 2022Article
- Morphine reduces the interest for natural rewards.Psychopharmacology · 2022Article
87 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
There are numerous problems with the hypothesis that brain dopamine (DA) systems, particularly in the nucleus accumbens, directly mediate the rewarding or primary motivational characteristics of natural stimuli such as food. Research and theory related to the functions of mesolimbic DA are undergoing a substantial conceptual restructuring, with the traditional emphasis on hedonia and primary reward yielding to other concepts and lines of inquiry. The present review is focused upon the involvement of nucleus accumbens DA in behavioral activation and effort-related processes. Viewed from the framework of behavioral economics, the effects of accumbens DA depletions and antagonism on food-reinforced behavior are highly dependent upon the work requirements of the instrumental task, and DA depleted rats are more sensitive to increases in response costs (i.e., ratio requirements). Moreover, interference with accumbens DA transmission exerts a powerful influence over effort-related choice behavior. Rats with accumbens DA depletions or antagonism reallocate their instrumental behavior away from food-reinforced tasks that have high response requirements, and instead these rats select a less-effortful type of food-seeking behavior. Nucleus accumbens DA and adenosine interact in the regulation of effort-related functions, and other brain structures (anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala, ventral pallidum) also are involved. Studies of the brain systems regulating effort-based processes may have implications for understanding drug abuse, as well as energy-related disorders such as psychomotor slowing, fatigue or anergia in depression and other neurological disorders.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.