BLINK RATE RELATED TO IMPULSIVENESS AND TASK DEMANDS DURING PERFORMANCE OF EVENT-RELATED POTENTIAL TASKS

Spontaneous eyeblinks have been indirectly related to central dopamine rgic activity in both human and animal studies. This relationship prov ides a potentially new technique for studying the role of dopamine in defining personality traits and psychiatric disorders. The purposes of the present study were to determine: (1) if a relationship exists bet ween impulsiveness and blink rate; (2) if blink rate varies with psych ophysiological demands. Eyeblinks were recorded during the performance of an augmenting/reducing event related potential (ERP) task and duri ng an oddball ERP paradigm designed to study P300 and late ERP compone nts. The results indicate that eyeblink rate: (1) is significantly rel ated to motor impulsiveness; (2) varies with task demands. There were no task-impulsiveness interactions. Although the bulk of recent resear ch relating neural transmitters to impulsiveness emphasizes a causal r ole for low serotonin, the current results suggest that this may be an oversimplification.