Why does the brain develop a tolerance for dopamine?
In: Biology
To look at it from an evolutionary standpoint, it’s useful for your brain to adjust what it considers normal to match what’s around it. This means that the relative significance of an unusual event is amplified, because it stands out from the normal. Your brain doesn’t have an infinite range of response to events so shifting the response to the most sensitive region makes it easier to react to events.
A non-drug example of this is danger. Modern life contains very few life threatening dangers but it is useful to avoid being injured. As a result, your brain changes your pain tolerance to make you more likely to avoid small injuries that you might have shrugged off if you lived outdoors all the time.
So, your brain doesn’t develop resistance to it so much as it learns to ignore the constant shouting so it can focus on optimising you for survival in any environment. This has the unfortunate effect of making it near impossible to be constantly happy, no matter your life circumstances.
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