How To Make Your Greedy Dopamine Receptors Work For You Instead Of Against You
It’s less about reward and a whole lot more about motivation
I’ve been studying psychology for roughly 5 years — give or take — and so you can imagine my surprise when I learned, for the first time today, that dopamine actually isn’t released when you take a bite of that chocolate cake, but, rather, in anticipation of it.
That’s right. If you were to measure the release of dopamine in the brain before, during, and after receiving a reward, you’d find that all activity of this particular neurotransmitter would come to a grinding halt as soon as that first taste of reward was experienced.
What’s more is that research has shown that in an environment where receipt of a reward is vastly more unpredictable, such as gambling, the signaling of dopamine neither diminishes, nor disappears, even when a reward is not attained. Rather, it was found that equal amounts of dopamine are released in an area of the brain known as the nucleus accumbens, both when a player loses a bet, as well as when they win.
So why is this so fascinating?
Well, I can only speak for myself when I say this, but making any amount of progress in understanding the way the brain works is one of the more…
