摘要：SummaryStriatal dopamine and smartphone behavior have both been linked with behavioral variability. Here, we leverage day-to-day logs of natural, unconstrained smartphone behavior and establish a correlation between a measure of smartphone social activity previously linked with behavioral variability and a measure of striatal dopamine synthesis capacity using [18F]-DOPA PET in (N = 22) healthy adult humans. Specifically, we find that a higher proportion of social app interactions correlates with lower dopamine synthesis capacity in the bilateral putamen. Permutation tests and penalized regressions provide evidence that this link between dopamine synthesis capacity and social versus non-social smartphone interactions is specific. These observations provide a key empirical grounding for current speculations about dopamine's role in digital social behavior.Graphical abstractDisplay OmittedHighlights•Putamen dopamine synthesis capacity correlates with smartphone social app use.•The correlation parallels a prior link between social app use and motor variability.•It is selective to social app use, controlling for multiple smartphone use factors.Behavioral neuroscience; Biological sciences; Neuroscience
