ArticleBrain structure & function2021
The nucleus accumbens and ventral pallidum exhibit greater dopaminergic innervation in humans compared to other primates.
Article in Brain structure & function, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- Comparative analysis of the cellular landscape in mammalian striatum.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Interspecies Organoids Reveal Human-Specific Molecular Features of Dopaminergic Neuron Development and Vulnerability.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Distribution of Serotonergic Transporter Innervation in the Nucleus Accumbens and Ventral Pallidum Is Highly Conserved Among Primates.The Journal of comparative neurology · 2025Article
- Intrinsic and synaptic regulation of axonal excitability in dopaminergic neurons.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2025Review
- Evolutionary innovations in the primate dopaminergic system.Current opinion in genetics & development · 2024Review
- Depression in adolescence and young adulthood: the difficulty to integrate motivational/emotional systems.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Review
- Hedonic eating, obesity, and addiction result from increased neuropeptide Y in the nucleus accumbens during human brain evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Striatonigrostriatal connectivity-based cross-species parcellation of human and macaque substantia nigra.Human brain mapping · 2023Article
- Identifying reproducible resting state networks and functional connectivity alterations following chronic restraint stress in anaesthetized rats.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
- Chimpanzee Extraversion scores vary with epigenetic modification of dopamine receptor gene D2 (Epigenetics · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Recent evidence suggests that increased dopaminergic signaling within the dorsal striatum played a central role in the evolution of the human brain. This increase has been linked to human prosociality and language in what has been described as a dopamine-dominated striatum personality style. Increased striatal dopamine is associated with an increase in ventral striatal activity and promotes externally driven behaviors, including cooperation and social conformity. In contrast, decreased striatal dopamine is associated with increased dorsal striatal activity and favors internally driven and goal-oriented behaviors. Previous comparative studies have focused on the dorsal striatum, measuring dopaminergic innervation in the dorsal and medial caudate nucleus and putamen. Here, we add to this knowledge by examining regions of the ventral striatum. We quantified the density of tyrosine hydroxylase-immunoreactive axons, as a measure of dopaminergic innervation, in the nucleus accumbens and ventral pallidum of humans, great apes, platyrrhine and cercopithecid monkeys. Our data show that humans have a significantly greater dopaminergic innervation in both structures, supporting the hypothesis that selection for a prosocial neurochemistry in the human basal ganglia may have contributed to the evolution of our uniquely social behavior profile.
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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.