Dopamine and adventurousness

[EcK]

Lazy gene favours adventurous choices - life - 27 July 2009 - New Scientist

IN A restaurant, do you order the dish you know you love or try a new one, in case you like it better? The level of the reward chemical dopamine you have in a brain region may determine your reply.

btw, that's one of the factors for mbti's extroversion.

The COMT gene codes for an enzyme that breaks down dopamine in the prefrontal cortex. People with a less efficient version of COMT have more dopamine in this region, and this makes them good at storing multiple ideas in the short term.

NP : P ?

those with the inefficient version of COMT were more likely than people with the active version to switch strategies to try to do even better (Nature Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1038/nn.2342). The team concludes that high levels of dopamine in the prefrontal cortex make people more adventurous, even when the status quo is fine.

Something tells me I have that gene.