Dopamine activation in Neuroticism as measured by spontaneous eye blink rate

Effects of maternal anxiety and depression on fetal neuro-development

“…Dieter, Emory, Johnson, & Raynor, 2008). Furthermore, spontaneous eye blink rate, is a non-invasive measure of central dopamine activity (Barbato et al 2012). Grigore, Gafitanu, Socolov, Grigore, Nemeti, G., & Micu, R. (2018) argued that blinking is an important parameter for fetal brain functional development and is regulated by the dopamine system.…”

Eye-blinks in choice response tasks uncover hidden aspects of information processing

“…Also, the application of dopamine agonists or antagonists changes eye blink rates in monkeys in the same direction (Jutkiewicz and Bergman, 2004[ 26 ]; Kleven and Koek, 1996[ 30 ]). Consequently, eye blinking behaviour has been applied as an indicator for cognitive states related to the dopaminergic system (Barbato et al, 2012[ 2 ]; Colzato et al, 2009[ 10 ]). Subjects that show higher eye blink rates preceding an experimental session are more attentive in a subsequent cognitive task (Colzato et al, 2008[ 9 ]) or demonstrate increased cognitive flexibility (Dreisbach et al, 2005[ 14 ]).…”

A potential link between gambling addiction severity and central dopamine levels – evidence from spontaneous eye blink rates in gamblers and controls

“…Overall psychopathology correlated positively with sEBR as a potential indicator of striatal dopamine levels in gamblers, but not in healthy controls. Psychological aberrations such as psychoticism has previously been related to heightened sEBR (Colzato et al, 2009;Barbato et al, 2012) and reduced striatal D2 receptor availability (Gray et al, 1994). The consistent association of schizophrenia and heightened striatal dopamine function (Gray et al, 1991;Di Forti et al, 2007;Eyles et al, 2012) together with a continuum model of psychosis (Johns and van Os, 2001) further support the hypothesis that a psychosis-prone personality has a dopaminergic basis (Ettinger et al, 2013).…”