Trial reportPsychopharmacology2012
Reliance on habits at the expense of goal-directed control following dopamine precursor depletion.
Trial report in Psychopharmacology, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers.
What it found
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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
53 citing papers in PubMed, 104 citations in OpenAlex.
- Shifting the balance between goals and habits: Five failures in experimental habit induction.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2018Trial
- Causal role of the inferolateral prefrontal cortex in balancing goal-directed and habitual control of behavior.Scientific reports · 2018Trial
- Sleep Deprivation Promotes Habitual Control over Goal-Directed Control: Behavioral and Neuroimaging Evidence.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2017Trial
- Dopamine Depletion Reduces Food-Related Reward Activity Independent of BMI.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2016Trial
- Dopamine modulates the neural representation of subjective value of food in hungry subjects.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2014Trial
- Gender differences in clinical outcomes for cocaine dependence: randomized clinical trials of behavioral therapy and disulfiram.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2014Trial
- Differential, but not opponent, effects of L -DOPA and citalopram on action learning with reward and punishment.Psychopharmacology · 2014Trial
- Dopamine restores reward prediction errors in old age.Nature neuroscience · 2013Trial
- Corticostriatal connectivity underlies individual differences in the balance between habitual and goal-directed action control.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2012Trial
- Dopamine depletion effects on cognitive flexibility as modulated by tDCS of the dlPFC.Brain stimulationTrial
- Adaptive integration of model-based and model-free strategies in human reinforcement learning of reachable space.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The prefrontal-striatal signatures of reduced model-based learning in depressed patients.Annals of general psychiatry · 2026Article
- Impact of binaural beat stimulation on working memory: a graph theory network approach.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
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- Secondary outcomes and qualitative findings of an open-label feasibility trial of lisdexamfetamine dimesylate for adults with bulimia nervosa.Journal of eating disorders · 2023Article
- Understanding the ADHD-Gut Axis by Metabolic Network Analysis.Metabolites · 2023Article
- Sex/Gender Differences in the Time-Course for the Development of Substance Use Disorder: A Focus on the Telescoping Effect.Pharmacological reviews · 2023Review
- An Integrative Model for Understanding Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Merging Cognitive Behavioral Theory with Insights from Clinical Neuroscience.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Article
- Catechol-O-Methyltransferase Effects on Smoking: A Review and Proof of Concept of Sex-Sensitive Effects.Current behavioral neuroscience reports · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
rationaleDopamine is well known to play an important role in learning and motivation. Recent animal studies have implicated dopamine in the reinforcement of stimulus-response habits, as well as in flexible, goal-directed action. However, the role of dopamine in human action control is still not well understood.
objectivesWe present the first investigation of the effect of reducing dopamine function in healthy volunteers on the balance between habitual and goal-directed action control.
methodsThe dietary intervention of acute dietary phenylalanine and tyrosine depletion (APTD) was adopted to study the effects of reduced global dopamine function on action control. Participants were randomly assigned to either the APTD or placebo group (ns = 14) to allow for a between-subjects comparison of performance on a novel three-stage experimental paradigm. In the initial learning phase, participants learned to respond to different stimuli in order to gain rewarding outcomes. Subsequently, an outcome-devaluation test and a slips-of-action test were conducted to assess whether participants were able to flexibly adjust their behaviour to changes in the desirability of the outcomes.
resultsAPTD did not prevent stimulus-response learning, nor did we find evidence for impaired response-outcome learning in the subsequent outcome-devaluation test. However, when goal-directed and habitual systems competed for control in the slips-of-action test, APTD tipped the balance towards habitual control. These findings were restricted to female volunteers.
conclusionsWe provide direct evidence that the balance between goal-directed and habitual control in humans is dopamine dependent. The results are discussed in light of gender differences in dopamine function and psychopathologies.
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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.