Dopamin erhöht leicht die Bereitschaft, auf Belohnungen zu warten, und reduziert die Impulsivität um etwa 20 %, was im Widerspruch zu früheren Studien steht, die darauf hindeuteten, dass Dopamin impulsive Entscheidungen steigert.

>While it is well known that dopamine influences decision-making, previous studies have produced inconsistent effects, sometimes making people more impulsive, and other times more willing to wait. Many of these studies had small sample sizes, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions. To clarify these mixed findings, the research team conducted a comparatively large study, including additional covariates that may underlie individual differences in dopamine function and that may influence how people respond to dopamine-enhancing drugs. 
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>In a double-blind randomised placebo-controlled within-subject study, 76 healthy male and female participants received either a placebo or L-DOPA, and chose between smaller immediate and larger delayed rewards. Using cognitive modelling, a method that uses computer-based mathematical and statistical models to understand mental processes, they further examined how dopamine influenced more nuanced aspects of decision-making, including the rate of evidence accumulation, response caution and processing speed.
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>Participants showed the well-known “magnitude effect”, such that larger rewards lost their value less over time than smaller ones. L-DOPA made participants slightly more willing to wait for rewards overall, but it did not credibly change the magnitude effect. Also, it did not credibly influence how quickly participants gathered information, how cautiously they made decisions, or how long they took to respond. This suggests that dopamine’s effect on waiting for rewards may not stem from changes in basic decision processes, but rather from how future rewards are valued over time.

[Dopamine and temporal discounting: revisiting pharmacology and individual differences | Journal of Neuroscience](https://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2025/10/23/JNEUROSCI.0786-25.2025)

That’s a really interesting shift from what earlier research suggested. It shows how complex dopamine’s role in behavior actually is.

It’s not just about pleasure or reward but also how the brain values time and future outcomes. Would be great to see follow-up studies comparing this with clinical data from ADHD or addiction contexts.

Help me understand how this can be true, while it’s also known that dopamine agonists like pramiprexole are known to induce impulsive-compulsive spectrum disorders?