Increased bilateral frontal connectivity during working memory in young adults under the influence of a dopamine D1 receptor antagonist.

Increased frontal bilaterality in old compared with young adults during cognitive performance is a common finding in human functional neuroimaging studies. Age-related reductions in laterality are a widely debated topic and their origins and consequences may be manifold. The current study demonstrates that a dopamine (DA) D1 antagonist induces increased frontal bilateral connectivity in healthy young adults revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging during a spatial working memory task. Moreover, increases in functional connectivity between right and left prefrontal cortex during the pharmacological challenge were associated with maintaining performance on drug. To our knowledge, this is the first study to pharmacologically induce increased frontal bilateral functional connectivity during a cognitive task in young adults and to show that increased bilaterality is associated with less severe cognitive impairment under the influence of a DA receptor antagonist.