Dopamine is a neurotransmitter: a molecule that neurons release to communicate with each other. This neurotransmitter has long been linked to a variety of mental functions. For example, dopamine has been tied to teaching two pigeons to play ping-pong by gaining food, as well as to helping us keep information in our “mind’s eye” while doing a task. Interestingly, research also suggests that dopamine boosts language processing: a complex mental process that involves decoding linguistic input, extracting meaning, and integrating it with prior knowledge. While dopamine’s enhancement of language processing has been related to its role in keeping information in the mind’s eye, this might not be the full picture. Dopamine might modulate of the inferential process as well (aka., the mental process of figuring something out based on what we already know).
In this thesis, I advanced our understanding of the role of dopamine in the neural processes that are relevant for our capacity to infer and represent of word meaning in language processing.