Item Details

abstract

Impulse Control Disorder (ICD) is a group of behavioral addictions arising in Parkinson’s Disease (PD) secondary to dopaminergic therapies. This dissertation investigates the role of dopamine in behavioral addictions using ICD as a human model. The overarching aims are: Aim 1) Quantify patients’ threshold for risk-taking and the behavioral influence of Reward Prediction Errors (RPEs) in patients with a history of ICD both on and off dopaminergic medications; and Aim 2) Measure sub-second dopamine fluctuations in the striatum during decision-making under risk. Behavioral experiments to address Aim 1 include PD patients with and without ICD completing a risky decision-making task and a reinforcement learning task both on and off dopaminergic medications. These studies reveal a detectable difference even in the absence of dopaminergic medications for the ICD patients in their task behavior and emotional reactivity. Further human electrochemistry experiments conducted to address Aim 2 during Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) electrode implantation surgeries corroborate these findings by pairing sub-second dopamine fluctuations to real-time human behavior. On tasks targeting risky decision-making and reinforcement learning, ICD patients have greater dopamine fluctuations in response to rewards than patients without ICD. Further, patients with Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD), a clinical predictor and comorbidity of ICD, also demonstrate a heightened dichotomy in dopamine fluctuations by reward valence. By using ICD as a human model for the role of dopamine in behavioral addictions, we identified behavioral and dopaminergic markers of ICD for future translational investigation.

subject

Addiction

Alcohol Use Disorder

Deep Brain Stimulation

Dopamine

Human Voltammetry

Impulse Control Disorder

contributor

Liebenow, Brittany Nicole (author)

Kishida, Kenneth T (committee chair)

Tatter, Stephen B (committee member)

Haq, Ihtsham Ul (committee member)

Montague, Read (committee member)

date

2022-09-17T08:35:49Z (accessioned)

2023-09-16T08:30:07Z (available)

2023 (issued)

degree

Neuroscience (discipline)

embargo

2023-09-16 (terms)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/101261 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

title

IMPULSE CONTROL DISORDER AS A HUMAN MODEL TO INVESTIGATE THE ROLE OF DOPAMINE IN BEHAVIORAL ADDICTION

type

Dissertation