Hormones Flashcards
Why dopamine exists?
Dopamine promotes survival by telling your body where to invest its energy. Your ancestors foraged for food by walking slowly until something triggered their excitement. That dopamine told them when to go for it. The mammal brain scans constantly for potential rewards, and dopamine is the signal that it has found some. It feels good, which motivates you to keep seeking and finding.
Dopamine is at the core of scanning our surroundings. In today’s world, you don’t need to forage for food, but dopamine makes you feel good when you scan your world, find evidence of something that felt good before and go for it. You are constantly deciding what is worth your effort and when it’s better to conserve your effort. Your dopamine circuits guide that decision. You might wish the good feeling of dopamine just flowed all the time, but that wouldn’t really benefit you.
When Do You Feel Dopamine?
Marathon runner at the finish line.
Football player when he scores.
How You Built Dopamine Circuits?
Your dopamine circuits are built from your own past dopamine experiences.
Without effort or intent, dopamine builds a neural template that helps you find rewards. It also stimulates the energy you need to pursue rewards. We are not born with circuits defining the rewards that meet our needs. We build them from life experience.
That’s why one person gets excited about eating crickets while another person gets excited about the Food Network. You can meet your needs by foraging for a career opportunity rather than a berry patch. But you do it with the operating system that met survival needs before there was language.
