In the beginning, Dopamine was perceived as the "pleasure molecule".Participants in early researches had pleasure when Dopamine was activated.Reputation was consolidated through more research on drug addicts, and it was named the reward circuit. Later, it was discovered that Dopamine is not an indicator of pleasure but a reaction to unforeseen, possibility, and anticipation. The Circuit of Dopamine was made to promote behaviors that lead us to survival and reproduction.

Dopamine motto is “much more”

Most dopamine neurons signal a reward prediction error; they are activated by more reward than predicted (positive prediction error), remain at baseline activity for fully expected rewards, and show depressed activity with less reward than predicted (negative prediction). When everything is familiar, our enthusiasm fades away, and we are looking for new things.For Dopamine, having is not what matters but getting something new. It's the difference between possessing something versus anticipating it and is designed to keep us alive and make us evolutionarily successful.

What is the trigger for Dopamine?

Drugs reroute the dopamine circuit with a more intense stimulation than natural rewards as food or sex. Different addictions are very similar because it hijacks the mechanism to keep us alive.

Dopamine and Addictions

People who love fine arts and those attracted by science have more in common because Dopamine controls both. There is no significant difference between the poet and the physicist because both thrive in the abstract world, and Dopamine is about the future and imagination.

Dopamine and arts

Why are we obsessed with the things we want only to be bored when we get them? Why is addiction perfectly logical to an addict? Why does love change so quickly from passion to indifference? Why are some people die-hard liberals and others hardcore conservatives? Why are we always hopeful for solutions even in the darkest times—and so good at figuring them out? The answer is found in a single chemical in your brain: dopamine. Dopamine ensured the survival of early man. Thousands of years later, it is the source of our most basic behaviors and cultural ideas—and progress itself. Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more—more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge, that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put, it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet, at the same time, it's why we gamble and squander. From dopamine's point of view, it's not the having that matters. It's getting something—anything—that's new. From this understanding—the difference between possessing something versus anticipating it—we can understand in a revolutionary new way why we behave as we do in love, business, addiction, politics, religion—and we can even predict those behaviors in ourselves and others. In The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and will Determine the Fate of the Human Race, George Washington University professor and psychiatrist Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD, and Georgetown University lecturer Michael E. Long present a potentially life-changing proposal: Much of human life has an unconsidered component that explains an array of behaviors previously thought to be unrelated, including why winners cheat, why geniuses often suffer with mental illness, why nearly all diets fail, and why the brains of liberals and conservatives really are different.

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Dopamine and arts

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Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
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