raclopride and Autistic-Disorder

The social motivation hypothesis of autism posits that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by impaired motivation to seek out social experience early in life that interferes with the development of social functioning. This framework suggests that impaired mesolimbic dopamine function underlies compromised responses to social rewards in ASD. Although this hypothesis is supported by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, no molecular imaging study has evaluated striatal dopamine functioning in response to rewards in ASD. Here, we examined striatal functioning during monetary incentive processing in ASD and controls using simultaneous positron emission tomography (PET) and fMRI. Using a bolus + infusion protocol with the D2/D3 dopamine receptor antagonist [

Topics: Autism Spectrum Disorder; Autistic Disorder; Corpus Striatum; Dopamine; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Positron-Emission Tomography; Raclopride; Receptors, Dopamine D2