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

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

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 exciting ways I like to use my noggin. Though it can certainly be argued that all learning is, to a certain extent, an intrinsically valuable process, it makes sense that when we examine the mechanisms responsible for our own mental functions, we enable ourselves to better grasp our control over them, in the first place.

Alright, so dopamine isn’t about pleasure — quite honestly, I’m still coming to terms with the overwhelming feeling of being lied to, but alas, tis the beauty about the ever-changing field of psychology — so what exactly is this neurotransmitter useful for?

Like most chemical processes in the brain, neuro-science is still trying to decipher precisely how and why these dopaminergic reactions may occur. And if, by chance, you’re as interested in jumping down the rabbit hole as I was this past week, look into some of the recent research hypotheses regarding dopamine, such as the prediction error system, or incentive salience.