Dopamine| What it is?

Dopamine is a short-acting hormone and neurotransmitter. It plays main role in reward system and learning and movement control. Neurons secrete this chemical when they want to repeat the procedure that was done before.

In evolutionary side of story it played a huge role, Imagine this;

Your estrogen or testosterone level increases when brain want to push you to make a child, but after orgasm these hormone levels drops hardly, and you find yourself disgusted from sex, but this is time for Dopamine to take action. Dopamine level increases fast to compensate, and you’re reaching to sense of full joy and well-being, and this feeling make you addicted to this euphoria state.

Or imagine that you’re hungry and you have to hunt to make your stomach full, and your cells to produce those ATPs and essential body needs. So when you’re hungry, hormones like NPY, GABA, Ghrelin and etc make you feel hungry, in your hypothalamus these hormones make you focus on moving object in order to hunt. But after eating, hormones like Serotonin, PPY, Leptin and etc suppresses your appetite, and your body starts digesting process, now you’re full you must rest ,but your brain secretes Dopamine to make you enjoy from this process and make you to hunt more and more in future.

These were Positive feedback system Dopamine has major effect on negative feedback system either; that means, doing bad thing that may effect your life, will drop dopamine level in brain and you tend to do less of those things in future.

Dopamine is also essential for neurons to arrange their connections and this hormone affect on speed of message transfer speed between neurons.

Parkinson’s Disease

Movement control is accomplished by complex interactions among various groups of nerve cells in the central nervous system. One such important group of neurons is located in the substantia nigra in the ventral midbrain. Nigral neurons give rise to an extensive network of axonal processes that innervate the basal ganglia, establishing predominantly symmetrical synapses with dendritic spines and shafts of medium spiny projection neurons. Neurons of the substantia nigra communicate with neurons of the basal ganglia by liberating the neurotransmitter dopamine . Such an interaction at the biochemical level is responsible for the fine tuning of an organism’s movements.

Dopamine has major effect on arranging message transmit in neurons, in absence of this chemical, you can’t control your movements easily while Dopamine is effecting on Corpus stratum to inhibit an existing movement; It means when you walk, some muscles should contract while other are suppressed, and changing between these stages is available by presence of this tiny magic!

Parkinson’s disease or paralysis agitansis a neurological disorder that affects movement control. In Parkinson’s disease, neurons of the substantia nigra progressively degenerate; as a result, the amount of Dopamine available for neurotransmission in the corpus striatum is lowered. The biochemical imbalance manifests with typical clinical symptoms that include resting tremor, rigidity, bradykinesia, i.e., a gradual slowness of spontaneous movement, and loss of postural reflexes or, in other words, poor balance and motor coordination.

Dopamine and Addiction

Dopamine make you feel loving other people and think positive at the same time, by increasing your message transmit speed in your brain,it increases your concentration and by blocking background noise of your brain it makes you to focus on everything that you want.

It’s a prize of brain to us to feel ourselves motivated, and to making habits, which brain wants those to be repeated over time.

Drugs like Cocaine, make your cells to produce dopamine without any reason, and you’ll experience euphoria. and to repeat that sniff again every cell of you brain will be begging to you, but this will lead to multiple organ failure and acute infections as Dopamine suppresses your immune system.

In patients that they suffer from ADHD and Narcoleptic attack, drugs like Adderall or Ritalin prescribe to make them more calm and focused, these people need these kind of drugs to maintain their jobs or etc. but these drugs are one of most abused drugs by students to stay awake during exam night. These kind of drugs are Dopamine reuptake inhibitors that cause your Dopamine to stay in your synaptic space once it’s naturally secreted.

Dopamine also Increase your heart rate and blood pressure and glucose level in blood. So if you have Diabetes, these kind of drugs could be deadly and cause Dopamine shock.

This hormone make you highly alerted by smallest change in your environment, so high dose of Dopamine in brain can cause schizophrenia.

Dopamine also effect on Salt reabsorbtion and GFR rate in your kidneys, so it cause you to lose water and dehydrate.

Be aware every drug that changes Dopamine level in your body is highly addictive. Your body will build tolerance so fast to these kind of drugs.