What do serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine do for us?
In: Biology
Seratonin is the body’s ‘happy chemical’, because it contributes to the our well-being and happiness. Seratonin is further used for functions such as mood control, learning, memory and a few other things.
Dopamine is a hormone which plays a role in human sensation/ pleasure. It is also used by the body for motor control, arousal, nausea and more.
Norepinephrine is also known as noradrenaline, which is used in the body’s fight or flight response. Noradrenaline is sent to the heart via the accelerator nerve and binds to the SAN cells (The SAN controls our heartbeat/ rate) which consequently increases our heartbeat, so that our body recieves more blood more quickly and thus more energy.
In general all three are neurotransmitters, which have the job of passing signals between neurons. There are multiple types so you can send multiple types of signals and not get confused, because each signal has a lock it acts as a key for.
While all three have many many functions, some are generalizable. Serotonin tends to be more involved in conscious thoughts and emotional regulation. In things like depression and anxiety disorders chemicals that increase serotonin *can* be helpful, but it’s important to note that it’s involved and serotonin does not equal happy. Magic mushrooms and other hallucinogens act like serotonin and produce altered stated of consciousness rather than distinct happiness. Dopamine is heavily involved in reward processing, both good and bad (depending on which lock is opened, yes each “key” has multiple types of locks). It is also involved in taking movements you decide to do and telling the spinal cord what to do; the neurons that make dopamine are what die during Parkinson’s disease. Norepinephrine controls a wide range of things. State of consciousness, be it asleep, awake, or in flight or fight mode involve norepinephrine. It also controls things like heart rate and blood pressure, when you hear someone say they take beta blockers, it’s something that blocks the lock for norepinephrine (beta is the name of the lock).
It is super important though to emphasize these are general functions and each has extremely complex functions that at times crossover. In addition, we don’t really know everything about them and what they do in every case, so these answers have the bias towards things that are discovered rather than including everything they might do.
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