Dopamine Part 1

The following quotes are from the source below and are the foundation for the inferences I make in the rest of this blog post. I am by no means an expert in neuroscience, the following blog is simply for thought provocation and discussion purposes.

“The neurons that produce dopamine in response to pleasure often seem to activate just before the pleasurable activity occurs” – Quote 1

“our brains release a certain amount of dopamine as a predictor of how pleasurable some activity is going to be” – Quote 2

“Dopamine motivates us, increasing our energy and drive and compelling us to engage in the pleasurable activity,if the pleasure prediction is correct, dopamine levels remain elevated if pleasure was better than predicted, dopamine levels increase and if pleasure was worse than predicted, dopamine levels plummet” – quote 3 (paraphrased)

The Pleasure Principle: Connections between Reward and Learning

Let’s break this concept down into stages.

Stage 1: Your brain makes a prediction about how much pleasure an activity will bring you on a scale of 0 to 10 and releases a corresponding amount of dopamine to get us motivated (or unmotivated) to perform that activity.

Stage 2: During the activity, the brain gauges if it was correct in it’s prediction by how much pleasure it feels, then adjusts the amount of dopamine it is currently releasing, motivating us to continue the activity or motivating us to stop the activity.

Stage 3: Upon completion of the activity, your brain decides how much pleasure it received from finishing the activity and correlates that to a certain amount of dopamine that it then releases into the brain as a reward or as a discouragement

From a purely numbers perspective, let’s give pleasure a scale of 0 to 10, 10 being one of the best and most amazing experiences of your life, 5 and 6 being somewhat neutral or maybe small amounts of displeasure or pleasure, and 0 being one of the worst experiences with no pleasure whatsoever. Activities receiving a 10 on the pleasure scale receive the most dopamine motivating you to do them and activities receiving a 0 on the pleasure scale receive the least amount of dopamine if any at all in an attempt to prevent you from doing them.

It’s easy to think of situations where the brain’s trial and error function of the production of dopamine is a great tool for producing good habits that keep us healthy and happy and can also prevent us from making the same mistakes in the future that harm our health or happiness, but let’s look at a couple practical examples.

Scenario 1

Let’s say you are sitting on your dining table and you look over at the sink and see a bunch of dishes piled high. Your brain anticipates the pleasure it will receive from having a clean sink and clean dishes and evaluates this pleasure at about a 5, in response, it releases a corresponding amount of dopamine for a pleasure of 5. So, receiving just enough motivation, you sigh, get up and do the dishes. While you are doing the dishes the brain continues to release dopamine so that you can continue with the activity until you are done. After finishing the dishes you survey the clean sink, wiping your hands with a towel and you smile, satisfied. Your brain feels a sensation that evaluates its previous prediction and claims that it was correct, the pleasure it received was at about a 5, and it releases that corresponding amount of dopamine as a reward. (causing the desire to smile and the feeling of satisfaction)

Scenario 2

Let’s say it’s Wednesday night and a couple of your friends have asked you to go out dancing for the fourth week in a row. You are weary. You’re pretty sure that you won’t like dancing and your brain only anticipates a small amount of pleasure from keeping your friends happy, which it evaluates at about 2, so it releases a tentative amount of dopamine and begrudgingly you follow your friends to the dance hall/studio. The brain releases less than half of the dopamine it did in Scenario 1 and only releases that much because it predicts it will derive at least some pleasure from keeping your friends happy. As far as dancing is concerned, your brain is stingy with its dopamine. But then, as you’re dancing, your brain realizes that it was very wrong, you LOVE dancing.

NOTE: According to other studies, three things associated with dancing can actually independently increase dopamine and they are exercise, music, and physical contact. Dancing takes all three and combines them into one activity making it dopamine tsunami!

But back to scenario 2, after your first dance, your brain receives a pleasure indicator of an 8 and it starts to freak out with dopamine production. The brain surges in it’s production of the chemical upon realizing it was wrong and uses the experience to motivate you to want to dance more. This is why so many people new to dancing become aggressively obsessed with dancing.

Scenario 3

Finally, let’s say during a winter storm, you are taking a quick walk outside as a child and you see a pond iced over. Your brain predicts a level of pleasure from walking on the ice at about 7 because you have seen beautiful ice skaters on television that seem to be having fun. Your brain is flooded with dopamine so that you are motivated to walk onto the ice, your heart beats as you get a few feet away from shore. All of a sudden, you feel the ice shifting under your feet and then the it suddenly cracks under your weight. You fall through the ice and into nearly freezing water. Your legs get bruised and your body experiences a terrible freezing shock. Fortunately though, your brain dumps a bunch of adrenaline realizing it’s very dire mistake pushing you to get you out of the ice and you survive. But following the dip in icy temperatures, your brain depletes all dopamine and adrenaline to imprint a memory on you that walking on top of a pond produces a pleasure value of 0. It’s telling you, I was very very very wrong and it almost killed you so I need you to not forget. Walking on ice on a pond is bad and brings no pleasure. Do NOT do this again.

The way our brain uses dopamine as a predictor and reward system for our pleasure to motivate us to do activities that will keep us happy and healthy is incredibly remarkable. I outlined the above information because I want you to start thinking about what activities you shy away from, which ones you just can’t seem to get motivated to do and which ones you avoid like the plague. Think about your level of motivation before doing different things during the day. The next blog I write is going to focus on how we can trick this dopamine production system in our brains to our benefit. I’m also going to talk about what happens when the dopamine manufacturing falls short or seems to fail completely. Please comment your thoughts or concerns and as always, thank you for reading!