It’s hard to get non indigenous neurotransmitters to the brain. Enzymes break them down before they can cross the blood brain barrier. However we can use drugs structured like these neurotransmitters to treat some diseases and conditions. A lot of schizophrenia medications are modeled like dopamine since the illness is caused by a dopamine disorder.
To add to many good points made here: Even if we could with perfect accuracy, we wouldn’t gain too much. Mental illness is MUCH more complicated than a simple disbalance of neurotransmitters. It’s a highly complex machinery of thousands of electrochemical processes across billions of neurons. You could measure the exact same composition of neurotransmitters in a suicidal patient and a dude who just won the lottery because there are so so many other factors at play.
It’s hard to get non indigenous neurotransmitters to the brain. Enzymes break them down before they can cross the blood brain barrier. However we can use drugs structured like these neurotransmitters to treat some diseases and conditions. A lot of schizophrenia medications are modeled like dopamine since the illness is caused by a dopamine disorder.
To add to many good points made here: Even if we could with perfect accuracy, we wouldn’t gain too much. Mental illness is MUCH more complicated than a simple disbalance of neurotransmitters. It’s a highly complex machinery of thousands of electrochemical processes across billions of neurons. You could measure the exact same composition of neurotransmitters in a suicidal patient and a dude who just won the lottery because there are so so many other factors at play.
It’s hard to get non indigenous neurotransmitters to the brain. Enzymes break them down before they can cross the blood brain barrier. However we can use drugs structured like these neurotransmitters to treat some diseases and conditions. A lot of schizophrenia medications are modeled like dopamine since the illness is caused by a dopamine disorder.
To add to many good points made here: Even if we could with perfect accuracy, we wouldn’t gain too much. Mental illness is MUCH more complicated than a simple disbalance of neurotransmitters. It’s a highly complex machinery of thousands of electrochemical processes across billions of neurons. You could measure the exact same composition of neurotransmitters in a suicidal patient and a dude who just won the lottery because there are so so many other factors at play.
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