dopamine and yours

Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and a longtime researcher of this neurotransmitter, would like to set the record straight: “Dopamine is not the pleasure molecule in the simple, direct way it is typically portrayed in the media,” she says. “Its function is much more nuanced.”

The number one determinant of dopamine release is novelty.

The more we activate that intense pleasure response on social media, Lembke says, the more we crave it. The repetitive action becomes less exciting and we end up needing more to give us the same pleasure we experienced with a lesser amount before. Harris likened social media to a slot machine — we don’t know if we’re going to have positive... See more

Schultz suggests dopamine serves as a common currency system for desire.

In this view, dopamine does not signify how pleasant an experience will be but how much value it has to the organism at that particular moment. Schultz notes that dopamine neurons do not distinguish among different types of reward. “They're only interested in the value,” he says. “They don't care whether it's food reward or liquid reward or money.... See more

“Often, depressed people say they don’t want to go out with their friends,” says Salamone. But it’s not that they don’t experience pleasure, he says – if their friends were around, many depressed people could have fun.

“Low levels of dopamine make people and other animals less likely to work for things, so it has more to do with motivation and... See more

Just like after a successful social interaction, dopamine is released after receiving positive feedback in social networks. Put briefly, these social media platforms leverage the same neural circuitry “used by slot machines and cocaine to keep us using their products,” states Harvard Medical School research technician Trevor Haynes in his piece... See more

Dopamine plays a lot of roles in the brain. If you kill off the cells that produce dopamine, the animal is not motivated to go out and do things. It’ll still enjoy something — like the sucrose solution you squeeze directly into its mouth — because the pleasure systems are fine. But they won’t pursue it. If you perform an action and you get more... See more