Integrating motivation, cognition and action - Frontal control of dopamine-dependent striatal processing

We aim to test an anatomically grounded model of how motivations are flexibly linked to actions through cognitive control. Previous work has suggested that the transformation of motivations into cognitively-controlled actions is cerebrally implemented through structured interactions between largely segregated fronto-striatal loops. The interactions between these loops are dependent on dopamine neurotransmission, and dopaminergic activity within each loop is regulated by topographically specific parts of the frontal cortex. Here we test whether stimulation of the human frontal cortex affects the transformation of motivation, via cognition, into action by controlling dopamine neurotransmission in the striatum in a topographically specific fashion.