title: Association between striatal dopamine D2/D3 receptors and brain activation during visual attention: effects of sleep deprivation.
abstract: Sleep deprivation (SD) disrupts dopamine (DA) signaling and impairs attention. However, the interpretation of these concomitant effects requires a better understanding of dopamine's role in attention processing. Here we test the hypotheses that D2/D3 receptors (D2/D3R) in dorsal and ventral striatum would distinctly regulate the activation of attention regions and that, by decreasing D2/D3, SD would disrupt these associations. We measured striatal D2/D3R using positron emission tomography with [(11)C]raclopride and brain activation to a visual attention (VA) task using 4-Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging. Fourteen healthy men were studied during rested wakefulness and also during SD. Increased D2/D3R in striatum (caudate, putamen and ventral striatum) were linearly associated with higher thalamic activation. Subjects with higher D2/D3R in caudate relative to ventral striatum had higher activation in superior parietal cortex and ventral precuneus, and those with higher D2/D3R in putamen relative to ventral striatum had higher activation in anterior cingulate. SD impaired the association between striatal D2/D3R and VA-induced thalamic activation, which is essential for alertness. Findings suggest a robust DAergic modulation of cortical activation during the VA task, such that D2/D3R in dorsal striatum counterbalanced the stimulatory influence of D2/D3R in ventral striatum, which was not significantly disrupted by SD. In contrast, SD disrupted thalamic activation, which did not show counterbalanced DAergic modulation but a positive association with D2/D3R in both dorsal and ventral striatum. The counterbalanced dorsal versus ventral striatal DAergic modulation of VA activation mirrors similar findings during sensorimotor processing (Tomasi et al., 2015) suggesting a bidirectional influence in signaling between the dorsal caudate and putamen and the ventral striatum.
authors.affiliation: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Bethesda, MD, USA.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Tomasi
authors.affiliation: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Bethesda, MD, USA.
authors.forename: G-J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Bethesda, MD, USA.|National Institute on Drug Abuse, Bethesda, MD, USA.
authors.forename: N D
authors.initials: ND
authors.lastname: Volkow
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003342:Corpus Striatum / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000503:physiopathology; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography; D017448:Receptors, Dopamine D2 / Q000502:physiology*; D050637:Receptors, Dopamine D3 / Q000502:physiology*; D012892:Sleep Deprivation / Q000503:physiopathology*
chemical_list: C581293:DRD2 protein, human; D017448:Receptors, Dopamine D2; D050637:Receptors, Dopamine D3