Dopamine Research Paper

“The Human Brain”, by myPerspectives, is an informative article that claims that the brain is a complex organ that is truly impressive. The brain is a key part of the central nervous system, that controls the entire body’s activities, to simple things such as breathing. These actions are fired through neurons, that quickly travel through the spinal cord. Surprisingly, the brain transmits these messages at an unimaginable rate, at 150 miles per hour, through 85 billion cells, called neurons. These neurons can form up to 10,000 synapses, or connections to each other. By itself, the brain can create billions of synapses, which change the structure of the brain every time new information is learned. However, there is still much that scientists

of the chemical messenger dopamine, which affects parts of the brain that control reward and

Unlike most other cells, neurons cannot regrow after damage (except neurons from the hippocampus). Fortunately, there are about 100 billion neurons in the brain.

How is the attention related to the the quantity of dopamine in each persons, and how it influenced their behavior.

Of the six most common neurotransmitters, dopamine is probably the one people know the most about. Dopamine is involved in controlling the reward and pleasure system in the brain. It allows us to recognize rewards and helps give us the ability to go after them. Learning, behavior, and cognition are also affected by dopamine levels. As with anything, if you have an imbalance, then bad things can happen. Parkinson’s disease can be caused by low dopamine amounts. People who have low dopamine levels can be addicted to substances easier.

Some dopaminergic (i.e., dopamine-releasing) neurons run from the substantia nigra to the corpus striatum; their loss gives rise to the clinical manifestations of Parkinson's Disease (Korczyn 1994); others, involved in the rewarding effects of drugs and natural stimuli, run from the mesencephalon to the nucleunucleus accumbens.

    In the human brain, the neurotransmitter that helps regulate voluntary body movement and emotional responses is known as dopamine. It also helps control the reward and pleasure centers of the brain.

In the research presented by Howes and Kapur (2009), they have pointed out a possible concern to invalidate the dopamine hypothesis in schizophrenia as current PET studies did not holding a firm position in measure the dopamine level, they were more to a postulation of a generated estimation from the data. Furthermore, Howes and Kapur (2009) also stressed that the role of dopamine could be circumvented by using the antipsychotic drugs which effectively to the psychotic symptoms but neutral to the dopamine system, thus the role of dopamine will be less critical in schizophrenia. This is because most of the recent antipsychotic researches only prove that dopamine merely contributed in providing a solution in alleviating the psychosis-liked-symptoms but those symptoms are not the symptoms only existed in schizophrenia.

“Teenagers only have to focus on themselves - it’s not until we get older that we realize that other people exist (Jennifer Lawrence).” The brain can be a tricky organ to understand. Phineas Gage helped out neurologists find out more about the brain and some other brain information. The brain is basically a storage unit for memories and how it learns different skills. Every time a new memory is formed, new brain connections are also made (qtd. Brain Facts). Also, since the brain is such a vital organ, it actually takes up 20% of the total oxygen and blood in your body. The brain is one of the most important organs in your body, if not the most important, that without it you couldn’t do anything (qtd. Brain Facts). To prove this, an active brain

Dopamine establishes different levels of the neurotransmitter in both the dorsa striatal and ventral striatal-prefrontal as dopamine is released. The dopamine released in the ventral striatal determines how strenuously individuals perform repeated tasks over time and the dopamine released in the dorsa striatal determines the speed in which the actions occur (p. 645). According to Luck, Wevrick & Vitaterna (2016) dopamine plays a crucial role in reward-associated behavior such as gambling, drug use, and over-eating, hence the word dopamine is often paired with the term “pleasure system.” Associations with dopamine have been correlated with feelings of enjoyment, pleasure and rewarding experiences and the reward canal is concentrated on dopaminergic neurons located mostly in areas of the midbrains (448-449).

A second neurotransmitter which is located in the brain is called Dopamine. It also involves motor movement, attention, learning, and memory. It is considered to be addictive. It helps to control movement and also emotional responses. This can result in Parkinson disease which happens to be a motor disorder. People with low dopamine activity are more than likely to become addicted. Schizophrenia is also associated with dopamine activity in certain parts of the brain.

Dopamine is a natural chemical that plays a critical part in the brains reward-based learning system which is believed to have initially evolved a thousand years ago for survival purposes. A particular experience or event can

ut dopamine itself? It’s not salience. It has far more roles in the brain to play. For example, dopamine plays a big role in starting movement, and the destruction of dopamine neurons in an area of the brain called the substantia nigra is what produces the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Dopamine also plays an important role as a hormone, inhibiting prolactin to stop the release of breast milk. Back in the mesolimbic pathway, dopamine can play a role in psychosis, and many antipsychotics for treatment of schizophrenia target dopamine. Dopamine is involved in the frontal cortex in executive functions like attention. In the rest of the body, dopamine is involved in nausea, in kidney function, and in heart function.

Author Sally Robertson discusses how dopamine functions in the brain. Dopamine is a member of a class of molecules called the “catecholamines”, which serve as neurotransmitters and hormones. In the brain, dopamine serves as a neurotransmitter and is released from nerve cells to send signals to other nerves. Dopamine has already been proven to have roles in thinking, memory, movement and reward. However, researchers have shown that dopaminergic neurotransmission plays a central role in modulating pain perception and analgesia within certain parts of the brain including the insula, thalamus, basal ganglia, anterior cingulate cortex and periaqueductal gray. In cases of acute pain suffered after an injury, pain signals are sent from the site of

The first way that dopamine affects our brains is by increased impulsiveness. Adolescents usually don’t reflect on what they are doing, and instead, do something because of an impulse. In an article titled “Dopamine and Teenage Logic.” Siegel said that “pausing enables us to think about other options beyond the dopamine-driven impulse pounding on our minds.” Impulses can be held back by “cognitive control.” Fibers in the brain work together and “create a space between impulse and action.” By being able