The developmental relationship between central dopaminergic level and response inhibition from late childhood to young adulthood

- How dopamine (DA) modulates response inhibition (RI) through the development is unclear.
- Relationships between DA and RI in late childhood and young adulthood were compared.
- DA and RI were tested by spontaneous eye blink rates (EBR) and the Go/Nogo task.
- Results showed that in both groups higher EBR is related with better RI ability.
- Children and adults had similar relationship between central DA function and RI.

Dopamine (DA) is known to modulate response inhibition (RI). In contrast to the abundant adult studies, only few developmental studies have focused on this topic. Moreover, the mechanism underlying the modulation of RI by the DA system from childhood to adulthood remains unclear. We aimed to assess whether the relationship between DA and RI during late childhood and young adulthood is similar. Accordingly, DA function was measured using the spontaneous eye blink rate (EBR), whereas RI ability was tested using the Go/Nogo task. Experiment 1 included 149 adults (age range, 18-25 years) who completed the EBR test and the Go/Nogo task; the results showed that higher EBR was associated with lower commission error in the Nogo trials. Experiment 2 included 45 children (age range, 10-12 years) and 37 adults (age range, 18-19 years) who completed the EBR test and Go/Nogo tasks (similar to experiment 1); in both the child and adult groups, higher EBR was related to better RI ability. As EBR is closely related to central DA function, these findings suggest that DA plays a similar role in the processing of RI in late childhood and young adulthood.