Frontier mental health research: psychedelics & drug studies

Each month our editorial team sifts through hundreds of papers and curates notable findings—for practitioners and informed readers who want to stay current with the evidence. Subscribe to the monthly Research Digest for expert analysis and concise summaries of key papers.

3 papers

Individual differences in extraversion and dopamine genetics predict neural reward responses

Michael X Cohen, Jennifer Young, Jong Min Baek, Christopher Kessler, Charan Ranganath
Cognitive Brain Research Summary & key facts 2005 271 citations

Researchers ran two fMRI studies using a gambling task to see how personality and a dopamine gene relate to brain reward signals. Rewards were given either right after a response (Study 1) or after a 7.5-second wait (Study 2). The studies found that people’s extraversion scores and whether they carried…

Functional Brain Connectivity Studies Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior

Trait Extraversion and Dopamine Function

Jan Wacker, Luke D. Smillie

Psychological Types is C. G. Jung’s book that grew from about twenty years of his clinical work. It explains his idea that people have different psychological types—most famously introversion and extraversion—and describes four basic functions (thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition). Jung wrote the book to link his clinical observations with wider…

Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders

The positive valence system, adaptive behaviour and the origins of reward

Thomas J. Burton, Bernard W. Balleine

This paper outlines the structure and function of the "positive valence system," a set of brain and body processes that create positive or rewarding responses. It explains how an ascending arousal system senses bodily changes, activates motivational states, and links those states with sensory inputs to produce Pavlovian learning, emotional…

Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies Neural dynamics and brain function Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
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