Dopamine challenge tests as an indicator of psychological traits

After discussing some introductory considerations about the value of challenge tests in general for discriminating personality dimensions which are considered extrapolations of psychopathological diseases, the present paper outlines the matter of responsivity to agonistic and antagonistic dopaminergic drugs or drugs of different mechanisms of action in the dopaminergic system, and elucidates that different hormones elicited by dopaminergic substances (prolactin, growth hormone) may indicate personality related differences in susceptibility of different brain areas. A further point was to demonstrate not only the well known relationship of dopaminergic hyperactivity with reward seeking and motivational factors associated with extraversion and novelty seeking, but also the relationship of dopaminergic hypofunction with the personality dimension of depression which had already been reported in studies on animals and psychiatric patients. A final point was to demonstrate that besides size of hormone responses additional parameters like time of response onset and initial prolactin increase can be used as biochemical indicators for identifying certain personality types, like highly depressive neurotic persons characterized by lower and later dopamine responses as compared to low depressives, and extraverted sensation-seeking types responding by an initial prolactin peak as opposed to low sensation seekers. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.