deepstash
Beta
Deepstash brings you key ideas from the most inspiring articles like this one:
Read more efficiently
Save what inspires you
Remember anything
How dopamine drives brain activity
3
Key Ideas
Save all ideas
Dopamine
Dopamine plays many roles in the brain. It is related to movement, motivation, and reinforcement of behavior.
Dopamine appears to exert significant effects in two regions of the brain's cortex, the motor cortex, and the insular cortex. The insular cortex is critical for many cognitive functions related to the perception of the body's internal states, including physical and emotional states.
201 SAVES
548 READS
Tracking dopamine
Dopamine, like other neurotransmitters, helps neurons communicate with each other over short distances. Most of the brain's dopamine is produced in the midbrain by neurons that connect to the striatum.
High dopamine concentrations do not make the neurons more active. However, they do make the neurons remain active for a more extended period of time, suggesting a longer response to the reward. It may have something to do with how dopamine promotes learning, which is one of its main functions.
183 SAVES
460 READS
Long-range effects
Researchers set out to determine if dopamine might affect more distant locations in the brain.
The regions that showed the most significant surges in activity in response to dopamine were the motor cortex and the insular cortex. The findings can help researchers understand the effects of dopamine in the human brain, including its roles in addiction and learning.
158 SAVES
513 READS
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
3
Key Ideas
Motivation to learn
As people get older, they often lose their motivation to learn new things. This get-up-and-go attitude is vital for our social well-being and learning.
In order to survive, we need to be ab...
Loss of motivation
Many mental health disorders can skew the ability to evaluate the cost and rewards of an action, such as anxiety and depression.
A depressed person may undervalue potentially rewarding experiences.
Improving cost-benefit motivation
Neuroscientists have now identified a brain circuit that is critical for maintaining cost and reward motivation.
Researchers are working on possible drug treatments that could stimulate this circuit. They suggest that training patients to enhance activity in this circuit through biofeedback could offer another potential way to improve their cost-benefit evaluations.
2
Key Ideas
Dopamine Functions
Dopamine is an important chemical messenger that plays several important roles in the brain and body:
- It influences moods and feelings of reward and motivation: When&nbs...
Increase dopamine levels naturally
They are generally well regulated by the body, but there are a few diet and lifestyle changes you can make to boost your levels naturally:
- Eat lots of protein
- Eat less saturated fat
- Consume probiotics
- Exercise often
- Get enough sleep
- Listen to music
- Meditate
- Get enough sunlight
6
Key Ideas
About Consciousness
Consciousness is everything you experience - taste, pain, love, feeling. Where these experiences come from is a mystery.
Many modern analytic philosophers of mind either d...
Searching For Physical Footprints
What is it about brain matter that gives rise to consciousness? In particular, the neuronal correlates of consciousness (NCC) - the minimal neuronal mechanisms jointly sufficient for any conscious experience.
Consider this question: What must happen in your brain for you to experience a toothache?
Neuronal Correlates of Consciousness (NCC)
The whole brain can be considered an NCC because it generates experience continually.
- When parts of the cerebellum, the "little brain" underneath the back of the brain, are lost to a stroke or otherwise, patients may lose the ability to play the piano, for example. But they never lose any aspect of their consciousness. This is because the cerebellum is almost wholly a feed-forward circuit. There are no complex feedback loops.
- The spinal cord and the cerebellum are not enough to create consciousness. Available evidence suggests neocortical tissue in generating feelings.
- The next stages of processing are the broad set of cortical regions, collectively known as the posterior hot zone, that gives rise to conscious perception. In clinical sources of causal evidence, stimulating the posterior hot zone can trigger a diversity of distinct sensations and feelings.
- It appears that almost all conscious experiences have their origin in the posterior cortex. But it does not explain the crucial difference between the posterior regions and much of the prefrontal cortex, which does not directly contribute to subjective content.