Controlling Your Dopamine For Motivation, Focus & Satisfaction | Huberman Lab Podcast notes
Dopamine is the primary determinant behind how excited we are, how motivated we are, and how ready we are to push through things to get what we want.
This article relates with the podcast episode “Controlling Your Dopamine For Motivation, Focus & Satisfaction | Huberman Lab - Episode 39”
Key takeaways
There are two pathways for dopamine to communicate. One for movement, one for motivation and craving.
There are two spatial scales at which dopamine can operate synaptically or volumetrically.
Dopamine can have slow effects, or even very long lasting effects.
Dopamine even can control gene expression, it can actually change the way that cells behave.
Dopamine is a universal currency in all mammals, but especially in humans for moving us toward goals and how much dopamine is in our system at any one time compared to how much dopamine was in our system a few minutes ago, and how much we remember enjoying a particular experience of the past.
Rewards given afterward actually make the situation worse. They won't make you like exercise more or study more, they actually will undermine the dopamine release that would otherwise occur for that activity.
Remember, a drop in dopamine is inevitable after a spike
Summary
In this podcast Dr. Huberman talks all about dopamine and what drives people to do the things that they do. He also talks about motivation, desire and craving, but also how dopamine relates to satisfaction and our feelings of wellbeing. He clarifies that dopamine lies at the heart of addiction to all things. However, in this podcast he mainly focus on how, what we do and how we do it, and how we conceptualize those things leads to changes in this amazing molecule in our brain and bodies that we call dopamine. He teaches what dopamine is and what it is not. Also, he talks about how dopamine actually works. He discuss about the biology of dopamine, some neural circuits and a really exciting aspect of dopamine biology or so-called dopamine schedules. In other words, he explains how things like food, drugs, caffeine, pornography, even some plant-based compounds can change our baseline levels of dopamine and in doing so, they change how much dopamine we are capable of experiencing from what could be very satisfying events, or events that make us feel not so good because of things that we did or took prior.
Dr. Huberman talks about a lot of tools, how to leverage dopamine so that people can sustain energy, drive and motivation for the things that are important over long periods of time. He shares a fascinating result that really underscores what dopamine is capable of in our brains and bodies, and underscores the fact that just through behaviors, no drugs, we can achieve terrifically high increases in dopamine that are very long and sustained in ways that serve us. This is a result that was published in the European Journal of Physiology and essentially what it involved is having human subjects get into water of different temperatures. So it was warm water, moderately cool water and cold water. Had them stay in that water for up to an hour, and they measured by way of blood draw things like cortisol, norepinephrine and dopamine. What was fascinating is that cold water exposure led to very rapid increases in norepinephrine and epinephrine, which is also just called adrenaline. It also led to increases in dopamine. And these increases in dopamine were very significant. They kicked in around 10 or 15 minutes after submersion into the cold water. It was also observed that dopamine release continued to rise and rise, and eventually reached 250% above baseline. Finally, he talks about compounds, supplements that people can take in order to increase their levels of dopamine.
What Dopamine (Really) Does
Dopamine hits that do not exist and the baseline of dopamine. When you experience something or you crave something really desirable, really exciting to you, very pleasurable. What happens afterwards is your baseline level of dopamine drops.
Tonic and phasic release of dopamine. Tonic being the low level baseline that's always there circulating. Phasic these peaks that ride above that baseline
Dopamine is what we call a neuromodulator.
Neurotransmitters are involved in the dialogue between neurons nerve cells. Neurotransmitters tend to mediate local communication.
Neuromodulators influence the communication of many neurons. In the nervous system what this means is that, dopamine release changes the probability that certain neural circuits will be active and that other neural circuits will be inactive.
Dopamine is not just responsible for pleasure, it is responsible for motivation, drive and craving. It also controls time perception. Dopamine is also vitally important for movement.
Two Main Neural Circuits for Dopamine
There are two main neural circuits in the brain that dopamine uses in order to exert all its effects. The first one is a pathway that goes from this area in the what's called the ventral tegmentum (bottom of the brain). It goes from the ventral tegmentum to what's called the ventral striatum and the prefrontal cortex. We call this is the, mesocorticolimbic pathway.
Mesocorticolimbic pathway is the pathway by which dopamine influences motivation, drive and craving. This is the pathway that really gets disrupted in addictions where in particular drugs that influence the release of dopamine like cocaine and methamphetamine. This is the classic reward pathway in all mammals.
Nigrostriatal pathway, pathway mainly for movement, this is the substantia nigra to dorsal striatum.
How Dopamine Is Released: Locally and Broadly
The way that dopamine is released in the brain and body can differ. It can be very local or it can be more broad.
Dopamine can do that like any other neurotransmitter or neuromodulator. So it can have one neuron influence another neuron. But dopamine can also engage in what's called a volume metric release. Volumetric release is like a giant vomit that gets out to 50 or a hundred or even thousands of cells. So there's local release what we call synaptic release, and then there's volumetric release. So volumetric release is like dumping all this dopamine out into the system.
If you were to take a drug or supplement that increases your level of dopamine, you are influencing both the local release of dopamine and volumetric release.
This relates back to the baseline of dopamine and the big peak above baseline.
Many drugs and indeed many supplements that increase dopamine will actually make it harder for you to sustain dopamine release over long periods of time. To achieve those peaks that most of us are craving when we are in pursuit of things. Because if you get both volume metric release, the dumping out of dopamine everywhere, and you're getting local release, what it means is that the difference between the peak and baseline is likely to be smaller. How satisfying or exciting or pleasureful a given experience is, doesn't just depend on the height of that peak, it depends on the height of that peak relative to the baseline.
Fast and Slow Effects of Dopamine
There are mainly two ways that neurons can communicate.
When neurons want to influence each other, they can do it by fast ionotropic conduction.
Dopamine is slower and it works through what are called G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) but can have multiple cascades of effects.
Dopamine Neurons Co-Release Glutamate
Neurons that release dopamine co-release glutamate. Glutamate is a neurotransmitter, stimulates neurons to be electrically active.
Dopamine is a universal currency in all mammals, but especially in humans for moving us toward goals and how much dopamine is in our system at any one time compared to how much dopamine was in our system a few minutes ago, and how much we remember enjoying a particular experience of the past.
Dopamine males people crave and pursue things outside of themselves.
Your Dopamine History Really Matters
Your experience of life and your level of motivation and drive depends on how much dopamine you have relative to your recent experience.
Dopamine hits, actually when you repeatedly engage in something that you enjoy, your threshold for enjoyment goes up and up and up.
Controlling Dopamine Peaks & Baselines
All of us have different baseline levels of dopamine. Some of this is sure to be genetic.
Dopamine has close cousins or friends in the nervous system.
Epinephrine also called adrenaline is the main chemical driver of energy.
What dopamine does is colors the subjective experience of an activity to make it more pleasureful, to make it something that you want more of.
Epinephrine is more about energy. Epinephrine alone can be fear, paralysis (mental), trauma.
Chocolate, Sex (Pursuit & Behavior), Nicotine, Cocaine, Amphetamine, Exercise
Chocolate will increase your baseline level of dopamine 1.5 times. It's transient. It goes away after a few minutes or even a few seconds.
Both the pursuit of sex and the act of sex increases dopamine two times.
In particular, nicotine that is smoked like cigarettes, increases dopamine two and a half times above baseline.
Cocaine will increase the level of dopamine in the bloodstream two and a half times above baseline.
Amphetamine another drug that increases dopamine will increase the amount of dopamine in the bloodstream 10 times above baseline.
Exercise will have a different impact on the levels of dopamine, depending on how much somebody subjectively enjoys that exercise.
Sex, nicotine, cocaine, amphetamine, cause increases in dopamine and everybody that takes them. Things like exercise, studying, hard work, working through a challenge in a relationship or working through something hard of any kind that is going to be subjective as to how much dopamine will be released.
Caffeine Increases Dopamine Receptors
Caffeine increase dopamine a little bit.
Caffeine increases up regulation of certain dopamine receptors. So actually makes you able to experience more of dopamine effects.
Caffeine increases the number, the density of those G protein-coupled receptors.
Talking about dopamine schedules is that layering together multiple things, substances and activities that lead to big increases in dopamine, actually can create pretty severe issues with motivation and energy right after those experiences and even a couple of days later.
Pursuit, Excitement & Your “Dopamine Setpoint”
Dopamine is the universal currency of forging and seeking (seeking water, seeking food, seeking mates). Seeking things that will provide sustenance and pleasure in the short-term and will extend the species in the long-term.
If we continue to participate in dopamine stimulating activities, we won't experience the same joy from those behaviors. This is what we call the dopamine setpoint.
Addiction, Dopamine Depletion, & Replenishing Dopamine
Example of people doing activities during the week. The problem is that dopamine is not just evoked by one of these activities, dopamine is evoked by all of these activities. What's happening is they're spiking their dopamine through so many different activities throughout the week, that their baseline is progressively dropping.
Ensure Your Best (Healthy) Dopamine Release
In order to engage with dopamine evoking activities in ways that are healthy and beneficial for us the key is not to expect or chase high levels of dopamine release every time we engage in these activities.
There's something called dopamine reward prediction error. When we expect something to happen, we are highly motivated to pursue it. If it happens great, we get the reward. The reward comes in various chemical forms including dopamine, and we are more likely to engage in that behavior again.
There's a intermittent schedule by which dopamine sometimes arrives, sometimes a little bit, sometimes a lot, sometimes a medium amount. That intermittent reinforcement schedule is actually the best schedule to export to other activities.
If you are engaged in activities school, sport, relationship, where you experience a win, you should be very careful about allowing yourself to experience huge peaks in dopamine, unless you're willing to suffer the crash that follows and waiting a period of time for it to come back up.
If you need coffee before visiting the gym …it is great except that by layering together all these things to try and achieve that dopamine release, and by getting a big peak in dopamine,
you're actually increasing the number of conditions required to achieve pleasure from that activity again.If you want to maintain motivation for school, exercise, relationships or pursuits of any duration in kind, the key thing is to make sure that the peak in dopamine, if it's very high, doesn't occur too often.
Your ability to experience motivation and pleasure for what comes next is dictated by how much motivation and pleasure and dopamine you experienced prior.
Smart Phones: How They Alter Our Dopamine Circuits
Interacting with digital technology can potentially lead to disruptions or lowering in baseline levels of dopamine (example of using the mobile phone during workout).
Stimulants & Spiking Dopamine: Counterproductive for Work, Exercise & Attention
People should use with caution stimulants every time they study or every time they work out or every time that they do anything that they would like to continue to enjoy and be motivated at.
There's one exception which is caffeine, because as mentioned before, if you like caffeine, that actually could be a good thing for your dopamine system, because it does upregulate the D2, D3 receptors.
Caffeine Sources Matter: Yerba Mate & Dopamine Neuron Protection
Yerba mate contains caffeine. It's also high in antioxidants. It also contains something called GLP-1 which is favorable for management of blood sugar levels.
Yerba mate turns out has also been shown to be neuroprotective specifically for dopaminergic neurons.
Caffeine & Neurotoxicity of MDMA
Caffeine increases the density and efficacy of these dopamine receptors, D2 and D3 receptors. MDMA is a potent drug for increasing concentrations of dopamine as well as serotonin and other neuromodulators.
And it appears that caffeine ingestion by upregulating these receptors, can lead to more toxicity of MDMA. So caffeine can be a beneficial substance in one context, and actually can be a detrimental if not dangerous substance in another context.
Amphetamine, Cocaine & Detrimental Rewiring of Dopamine Circuits
Two substances that greatly increase dopamine, namely amphetamine and cocaine can cause long-term problems with the dopaminergic pathways. Amphetamine or cocaine limits the ability of later experience to promote structural plasticity in the neocortex and nucleus accumbens.
Stimulating Long-Lasting Increases in Baseline Dopamine
40 degree water or 45 degree (F) water can have tremendously beneficial results on your neuromodulator systems, including dopamine.
Getting into the cold water they observed that dopamine levels started to rise somewhat slowly and then continued to rise and reach levels as high as 2.5 times above baseline.
Tuning Your Dopamine for Ongoing Motivation
Positive aspects of rewards for our behavior, and the negative aspects of rewards for our behavior.
Because of the way that dopamine relates to our perception of time, working hard at something for sake of a reward that comes afterward, can make the hard work much more challenging and make us much less likely to lean into hard work in the future. Example with children drawing.
When we receive rewards, even if we give ourselves rewards for something, we tend to associate less pleasure with the actual activity itself that evoked the reward.
If you get a peak in dopamine from a reward, it's going to lower your baseline and the cognitive interpretation is that you didn't really do the activity because you enjoyed the activity. You did it for the reward.
Dopamine controls our perception of time. When and how much dopamine we experience is the way that we carve up what we call our experience of time.
Because it all arrives at the end over time, we have the experience of less and less pleasure from that particular activity while we're doing it. Now, this is the antithesis of growth mindset (Carol Dweck, has come up with this incredible theory and principle, and actually goes beyond theory and principle called "Growth Mindset", which is this striving to be better to be in this mindset of I'm not there yet, but striving itself is the end goal).
Especially hard endeavors is to not start layering in other sources of dopamine in order to get to the starting line, not layering in other sources of dopamine in order to be able to continue, but rather to subjectively start to attach the feeling of friction and effort to an internally generated reward system.
Validation of Your Pre-Existing Beliefs Increases Dopamine
Study showed that hearing something that reinforces one's prior beliefs actually can evoke dopamine release.
Prescription And Non-Prescription Drugs To Increase Dopamine Levels
Wellbutrin (depression medication) increases dopamine and can increase motivation and craving but also can create a state of elevated alertness that can sometimes get in the way of healthy eating and things of that sort.
Macuna pruriens contain L-dopa which is the precursor for dopamine, however, the crash or reduction in dopamine takes place. Sperm concentration, sperm quality is actually greatly increased by Macuna Pruriens.
L-tyrosine is an amino acid precursor to L-dopa. Leads to a increase in dopamine and can improve focus but dosing is difficult to dial in and will be followed by a crash.
Phenethylamine (PEA) can be used similarly to L-tyrosine, intermittently to improve focus.
Huperzine A is a newer nootropic compound found to improve neurotransmitters in the brain.
Close social connections that release oxytocin have been found to trigger the dopamine system.
Article initially posted here.
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