I was reading a book about addiction and wondered why does dopamine make us feel good. I understood the mechanism (largely speaking), dopamine latches unto a receptor and that we perceive as feel-good-stuff, but why? Why does dopamine, getting connected to a receptor, make us feel that way?
I know that we haven’t figured completely how the brain works, so maybe we don’t know why it does that, but still
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Humans have a biological supercomputer in their heads that can actually ponder the meanings and motivations of the universe, but most animals don’t.
They need a more rudimentary system to actually make them do things. Why procreate? Why store food for winter? Why even eat? Why do anything?
We big brained hominids know logically why an animal would do that but they themselves don’t. They do it because their brain compels them to do it, and rewards them when the work is complete.
This rudimentary “do a thing to release the good chemical” is a critically important biological function. Without it, there’s really no innate motivation for anything to do anything.
It works in a lizard, and it works on a human – do what you’re evolutionarily “supposed” to do and you’ll feel better.
Animals that don’t do that go extinct, so there’s a strong selective pressure to keep the system in place.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter which means that it is part of the forwarding of signals from one neuron’s ending, the synapse, to the next neuron’s dendrits. There is a gap between them called synaptic cleft which uses chemical messengers (neurotransmitters) instead of the neuron’s regular signal forwarding through the electric membrane potential. The receptors you are mentioning are on the post-synaptic membrane of the next cell and regulate the ion channels which change the electric potential of the membrane by letting ions in or out.
**You can see that there is a translation from the chemical to the electric signal happening.** In other words, without dopamine, that signal wouldn’t be forwarded in the same way. Dopamine allows for easier transmission of signals in areas of the brain important for motivation and movement for instance. It could be described as an overstimulation compared to the regular state.
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