Cannabis, cocaine, and visuomotor integration: evidence for a role of dopamine D1 receptors in binding perception and action

Abstract

The primate cortex represents and produces events in a distributed way, which calls for a mechanism that integrates their features into coherent structures. Visuomotor integration seems to be driven by dopaminergic (DA) pathways but which subsystems are involved is currently unknown. The present study compared the impact of the recreational use of two drugs on visuomotor integration: cannabis, which primarily targets dopaminergic D1 receptors, and cocaine, which mainly targets D2 receptors. Our findings show that cannabis but not cocaine use affects the strength of the binding between task-relevant stimulus features and the accompanying response. In contrast, cocaine but not cannabis use eliminates the inhibition of return. The observed pattern suggests that visuomotor integration is driven by DA/D1, but not DA/D2 receptor systems.