Striatal dopamine synthesis capacity reflects smartphone social activity

Summary: Striatal dopamine and smartphone behavior have both been linked with behavioral variability. Here, we leverage day-to-day logs of natural, unconstrained smartphone behavior and establish a correlation between a measure of smartphone social activity previously linked with behavioral variabil...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Andrew Westbrook, Arko Ghosh, Ruben van den Bosch, Jessica I. Määttä, Lieke Hofmans, Roshan Cools
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2021-05-01
Series:iScience
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258900422100465X
Description
Summary:Summary: Striatal dopamine and smartphone behavior have both been linked with behavioral variability. Here, we leverage day-to-day logs of natural, unconstrained smartphone behavior and establish a correlation between a measure of smartphone social activity previously linked with behavioral variability and a measure of striatal dopamine synthesis capacity using [18F]-DOPA PET in (N = 22) healthy adult humans. Specifically, we find that a higher proportion of social app interactions correlates with lower dopamine synthesis capacity in the bilateral putamen. Permutation tests and penalized regressions provide evidence that this link between dopamine synthesis capacity and social versus non-social smartphone interactions is specific. These observations provide a key empirical grounding for current speculations about dopamine's role in digital social behavior.
ISSN:2589-0042