Dopamine and serotonin: Integrating current affective engagement with longer-term goals

Interpreting VTA dopamine activity as a facilitator of affective engagement fits Depue & Collins's agency dimension of extraverted personality and als o Watson's and Tellegen's (1985) engagement dimension of state mood. Seroto nin, by turning clown the gain on dopaminergic affective engagement, would permit already prepotent responses or habits to prevail against the behavio r-switching incentive-simulation-driven temptations of the moment facilitat ed by fickle VTA DA. Intelligent switching between openly responsive affect ive engagement and constraint by longterm plans, goals, or values presumabl y involves environment-sensitive balancing of these neuromodulators, such a s socially dominant primates may show.