Brief Summary
This episode of the Huberman Lab Podcast explores the science of dopamine, its role in motivation, drive, craving, satisfaction, and addiction. It dispels common myths about dopamine "hits" and explains how dopamine works through baseline levels and peaks, influencing our feelings of well-being. The episode provides tools to leverage dopamine for sustained energy and motivation, emphasizing the importance of understanding dopamine schedules and kinetics to optimize its release.
- Dopamine is not just about pleasure; it's crucial for motivation, drive, and craving.
- The relationship between dopamine peaks and baselines dictates our experience of motivation and pleasure.
- Intermittent reward schedules and cold water exposure can help maintain healthy dopamine levels.
Introduction & Tool 1 to Induce Lasting Dopamine
The episode introduces dopamine as a key molecule driving motivation, desire, craving, and satisfaction. It highlights the importance of understanding dopamine's role in addiction and how behaviors can significantly impact dopamine levels. The host shares a study where cold water exposure led to a 250% increase in dopamine above baseline, which was sustained after the exposure, promoting alertness and a calm state of mind. The episode promises to provide tools for leveraging dopamine to sustain energy and motivation.
Sponsors: Roka, InsideTracker, Headspace
The host thanks the sponsors of the podcast, Roka, InsideTracker, and Headspace. Roka makes high-quality sunglasses and eyeglasses designed with visual system biology in mind, ensuring clarity and comfort. InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes blood and DNA data to provide insights for optimizing health. Headspace is a meditation app with a wide range of meditations to help maintain consistency in meditation practice.
Upcoming (Zero-Cost) Neuroplasticity Seminar for Educators
The host announces a zero-cost event called Rethink Education, focusing on the biology of learning and neuroplasticity for educators. The event will cover the plasticity super protocol, incorporating rapid and efficient learning techniques. It is scheduled for September 30th, 2021, at 3:00 p.m. Eastern, with a registration link provided in the episode's caption.
What Dopamine (Really) Does
The episode clarifies that dopamine is not just about "dopamine hits" but involves a baseline level and peaks above that baseline. Experiencing something desirable causes a dopamine peak, followed by a drop in the baseline level. This concept is referred to as tonic (baseline) and phasic (peaks) dopamine release. Dopamine is a neuromodulator that influences the activity of neural circuits, affecting energy levels, mindset, and the ability to accomplish tasks. Dopamine is primarily responsible for motivation, drive, and craving, as well as controlling time perception and is also vitally important for movement.
Two Main Neural Circuits for Dopamine
Dopamine exerts its effects through two main neural circuits. The first is the mesocorticolimbic pathway, which goes from the ventral tegmentum to the ventral striatum and prefrontal cortex, influencing motivation, drive, and craving. The second pathway, the nigrostriatal pathway, connects the substantia nigra to the dorsal striatum and is primarily involved in movement.
How Dopamine Is Released: Locally and Broadly
Dopamine can be released locally at synapses or more broadly through volumetric release, affecting many neurons at once. This influences both local and widespread neural circuit activity. Drugs or supplements that increase dopamine affect both local and volumetric release, which can impact the baseline level of dopamine and the height of dopamine peaks.
Fast and Slow Effects of Dopamine
Dopamine works through G protein-coupled receptors, which are slower than fast electrical synapses. This means dopamine's effects take longer to occur and can have multiple cascades of effects, even impacting gene expression. Dopamine can have slow, long-lasting effects and can change how cells behave.
Dopamine Neurons Co-Release Glutamate
Dopamine neurons co-release glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter, which stimulates neurons to be electrically active. Dopamine tends to stimulate sympathetic arousal, increasing alertness and the desire to pursue things. Dopamine makes you look outside yourself, pursue things, and crave things.
Your Dopamine History Really Matters
Your experience of life, motivation, and drive depends on how much dopamine you have relative to your recent experiences. Repeatedly engaging in something enjoyable increases the threshold for enjoyment. How much dopamine you experience from something depends on your baseline level of dopamine and your previous dopamine peaks.
Parkinson’s & Drugs That Kill Dopamine Neurons. My Dopamine Experience
The host shares two anecdotes to illustrate the biology of dopamine. The first is about the MPTP outbreak in the 1980s, where young opioid addicts became paralyzed due to a drug that killed dopaminergic neurons. The second is a personal experience where the host was injected with Thorazine, an antipsychotic drug that blocks dopamine receptors, leading to an overwhelming sense of depression.
Tool 3 Controlling Dopamine Peaks & Baselines
Everyone has different baseline levels of dopamine, influenced by genetics and past experiences. Dopamine and epinephrine (adrenaline) are closely related, with epinephrine being manufactured from dopamine. Dopamine colors the subjective experience of an activity, making it more pleasurable, while epinephrine is more about energy.
Chocolate, Sex (Pursuit & Behavior), Nicotine, Cocaine, Amphetamine, Exercise
Different activities and substances increase dopamine levels to varying degrees. Chocolate increases dopamine 1.5 times above baseline, sex doubles it, nicotine increases it 2.5 times, cocaine 2.5 times, and amphetamine 10 times. Exercise increases dopamine depending on how much someone enjoys it. Engaging with something more and thinking about it positively can increase its rewarding properties.
Tool 4 Caffeine Increases Dopamine Receptors
Caffeine modestly increases dopamine, but regular ingestion of caffeine increases the upregulation of certain dopamine receptors, making you able to experience more of dopamine's effects. Combining multiple substances and activities that increase dopamine can create issues with motivation and energy afterward.
Pursuit, Excitement & Your “Dopamine Setpoint”
Dopamine drives us to seek things, including water, food, and mates. After finding a reward, dopamine levels return to a lower level, often below the initial baseline, to motivate further foraging. The extent of the drop below baseline is proportional to how high the peak was. Everyone has a dopamine set point, and repeatedly engaging in behaviors that increase dopamine can reduce the joy experienced from those behaviors.
Your Pleasure-Pain Balance & Defining “Pain”
The pleasure-pain balance is governed by dopamine. The "pain" comes from the lack of dopamine that follows a peak. This is due to the depletion of synaptic vesicles containing dopamine, which are necessary for dopamine release.
Addiction, Dopamine Depletion, & Replenishing Dopamine
Addiction occurs when someone pursues a drug or activity that leads to huge increases in dopamine, followed by a drop in the baseline. This depletion of dopamine leads to feeling lousy, and pursuing the activity again only lowers the baseline further. Replenishing dopamine involves abstaining from these dopaminergic seeking behaviors.
Tool 5 Ensure Your Best (Healthy) Dopamine Release
The optimal way to engage in activities that evoke dopamine is through intermittent release. Avoid chasing high levels of dopamine release every time. Intermittent reward schedules are effective for maintaining motivation. Vary how much dopamine you experience with each engagement in an activity.
Smart Phones: How They Alter Our Dopamine Circuits
Smartphones can disrupt baseline levels of dopamine by layering in dopamine sources. Removing multiple sources of dopamine release from activities you want to continue to enjoy can help restore pleasure and motivation.
Stimulants & Spiking Dopamine: Counterproductive for Work, Exercise & Attention
Avoid using stimulants every time you study or work out, as it will reduce the satisfaction and joy from those activities. Intermittent spiking of dopamine is the way to go, and chronically trying to spike dopamine will undermine motivation, focus, and drive in the long run.
Caffeine Sources Matter: Yerba Mate & Dopamine Neuron Protection
Caffeine can increase the density and efficacy of dopamine receptors. Yerba mate, in particular, has neuroprotective properties for dopaminergic neurons.
Caffeine & Neurotoxicity of MDMA
Caffeine can increase the toxicity of MDMA by upregulating dopamine receptors.
Amphetamine, Cocaine & Detrimental Rewiring of Dopamine Circuits
Amphetamine and cocaine can cause long-term problems with dopaminergic pathways by limiting the brain's ability to change and learn.
Ritalin, Adderall, (Ar)Modafinil: ADHD versus non-Prescription Uses
The use of drugs like Adderall, Ritalin, modafinil, and armodafinil to increase dopamine can block neuroplasticity.
Tool 6 Stimulating Long-Lasting Increases in Baseline Dopamine
Cold water exposure can increase dopamine levels by 250% above baseline, with sustained effects lasting up to three hours.
Tool 7 Tuning Your Dopamine for Ongoing Motivation
Rewards for behavior can have positive and negative aspects. Working hard for a reward that comes afterward can make the hard work more challenging. Intrinsic reinforcement, where pleasure is associated with the activity itself, is more beneficial.
Tool 8 Intermittent Fasting: Effects on Dopamine
Intermittent fasting can increase dopamine release from the deprivation, not just from the food reward. Knowledge of the benefits of fasting can reinforce the rewarding properties of the behavior.
Validation of Your Pre-Existing Beliefs Increases Dopamine
Hearing something that reinforces one's prior beliefs can evoke dopamine release.
Tool 9 Quitting Sugar & Highly Palatable Foods: 48 Hours
Avoiding highly palatable foods can make more bland foods taste delicious again.
Pornography
Pornography can negatively shape real-world romantic and sexual interactions due to the high dopamine release it evokes.
Wellbutrin & Depression & Anxiety
Wellbutrin (bupropion) increases dopamine and norepinephrine and can be a useful drug for treating depression and smoking cessation.
Tool 10 Mucuna Pruriens, Prolactin, Sperm, Crash Warning
Mucuna Pruriens, containing l-DOPA, can reduce Parkinson's symptoms, blunt prolactin, and increase sperm concentration and quality. However, it can also lead to a crash or reduction in baseline dopamine.
Tool 11 L-Tyrosine: Dosages, Duration of Effects & Specificity
L-tyrosine, an amino acid precursor to l-DOPA, can increase dopamine levels, enhancing focus and alertness.
Tool 12 Avoiding Melatonin Supplementation, & Avoiding Light 10pm-4am
Melatonin supplementation and viewing bright lights between 10:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. can reduce levels of dopamine.
Tool 13 Phenylethylamine (with Alpha-GPC) For Dopamine Focus/Energy
PEA (phenethylamine), found in chocolate, can increase synaptic levels of dopamine.
Tool 14 Huperzine A
Huperzine A can increase acetylcholine transmission and lead to increases in dopamine in the medial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus.
Social Connections, Oxytocin & Dopamine Release
Oxytocin and social connection directly stimulate the dopamine pathway.
Direct & Indirect Effects: e.g., Maca; Synthesis & Application
Maca root and the gut microbiome can indirectly influence dopamine by creating an environment in which dopamine and dopamine circuits can flourish.
Zero-Cost & Other Ways To Support Podcast & Research
The host encourages viewers to subscribe to the YouTube channel, leave comments and suggestions, subscribe on Apple and Spotify, check out the sponsors, and support research at Stanford.
