title: Dopey dopamine: high tonic results in ironic performance.
abstract: Financial incentives are commonly used as motivational tools to enhance performance. Decades of research have established that the neurotransmitter dopamine (DA) is the fuel that propels reward-motivated behavior, yet a new PET study questions whether dopamine is beneficial to performance, showing that tonic DA synthesis predicts performance decrements when incentives are high.
authors.affiliation: Fear, Anxiety and Biosocial Behavioral Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Columbia University, Schermerhorn Hall, Room 409, 1190 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027, USA.
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Silston
authors.affiliation: Fear, Anxiety and Biosocial Behavioral Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Columbia University, Schermerhorn Hall, Room 409, 1190 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027, USA. Electronic address: dmobbs@psych.columbia.edu.
authors.forename: Dean
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Mobbs
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D003071:Cognition; D004298:Dopamine / Q000378:metabolism*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D017072:Neostriatum / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D011877:Radionuclide Imaging; D012201:Reward
chemical_list: D004298:Dopamine