Levodopa Faster and better word learning in normal humans左旋多巴在正常人类中更快，更好的词汇学习.pdfVIP

ORIGINAL ARTICLES Levodopa: Faster and Better Word Learning in Normal Humans Stefan Knecht, MD,1 Caterina Breitenstein, PhD,1 Stefan Bushuven, MS,1 Stefanie Wailke, MS,1 Sandra Kamping, MA,1 Agnes Flo¨el, MD,1 Pienie Zwitserlood, PhD,2 and E. Bernd Ringelstein MD Dopamine is a potent modulator of learning and has been implicated in the encoding of stimulus salience. Repetition, however, as required for the acquisition and reacquisition of sensorimotor or cognitive skills (e.g., in aphasia therapy), decreases salience. We here tested whether increasing brain levels of dopamine during repetitive training improves learn- ing success. Forty healthy humans took 100mg of the dopamine precursor levodopa or placebo daily for 5 days in a randomized double-blind and parallel-group design. Ninety minutes later on each day, subjects were trained on an artificial vocabulary using a high-frequency repetitive approach. Levodopa significantly enhanced the speed, overall suc- cess, and long-term retention of novel word learning in a dose-dependent manner. These findings indicate new ways to potentiate learning in a variety of domains if conventional training alone fails. Ann Neurol 2004;56:20–26 Learning involves changes in synaptic strengths in- However, Bao and colleagues recently have shown duced by activity-dependent coincident firing of pre- that intact rats also learn better when receiving stimu- 1,2 23 synaptic and postsynaptic neurons. In addition, syn- lation of the dopaminergic ventral teg