The cost of dopamine for dynamic cognitive control

- Dynamic cognitive control involves cost-benefit decision making.
- Cognitive enhancing drugs alter cognitive control, in part, by increasing dopamine.
- Dopamine's effects vary across distinct prefrontal and striatal target regions.
- Prefrontal dopamine alters distractor-resistance and goal-stabilization.
- Striatal dopamine biases decision making about whether to exert cognitive control.

Cognitive control helps us attain our goals by resisting distraction and temptations. Some of us strive to enhance it beyond normal, for example by means of dopaminergic medication like methylphenidate. However, the cognitive effects of such smart drugs are unclear. What we need is an understanding of the mechanisms by which dopamine modulates cognitive control. Advances in cognitive neuroscience highlight a role for dopamine in cost-benefit decision-making. I build on these advances by re-conceptualizing cognitive control as involving not just prefrontal dopamine, but also modulation of cost-benefit decision-making by striatal dopamine. This approach will help us understand why we sometimes fail to (choose) to exert cognitive control, while also identifying mechanistic factors that predict dopaminergic drug effects on cognitive control.