What is dopamine and why is it important?
Dopamine, the feel-good neurotransmitter, is vital for survival, released in our brains during pleasure and reward. With rising interest in dopamine, we asked our expert psychologist to break down what dopamine is, why it’s important and how you can increase your levels.
Dr Anastasia Hronis, a clinical psychologist, lecturer and researcher at the UTS Graduate School of Health and author of The Dopamine Brain, explains how dopamine doesn't just trigger during pleasurable moments; it’s also activated when we anticipate pleasure. For instance, simply thinking about having a donut can release dopamine.
This means that dopamine not only reacts to pleasure but also motivates us to seek it out. It operates automatically and unconsciously, reinforcing positive behaviours. This was important in ancient times, when finding pleasure in eating and reproduction ensured the survival of our species.
Dopamine was discovered in 1910 by British chemists George Barger and James Ewens, and its role became clearer in 1957 thanks to Swedish neuropharmacologist Arvid Carlsson's experiments. He found that lowering dopamine levels in rabbits disrupted their movement, shedding light on conditions like Parkinson's disease.
Since Carlsson’s breakthrough, research on dopamine has expanded. It now explores its role in motivating reward-seeking behaviour, its links to conditions like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and depression, and its impact on kidney function. Based on the number of research studies, dopamine is arguably one of our most important neurotransmitters.
Dopamine sensitivity
Some people’s brains are more sensitive to dopamine than others. “Each person has a unique baseline for dopamine sensitivity and activation,” says Dr Hronis.
“This influences how quickly dopamine is released, how sensitive we are to its effects and the pleasure we experience from its release. While these baselines vary among individuals, they typically do not differ significantly.”
However, this sensitivity differs again in conditions like ADHD, with current research exploring potential links between low dopamine levels and depression, highlighting its importance for our mental health and well-being.
What are some ways to boost dopamine?
There are both healthy and less healthy ways to activate dopamine in the brain. Listening to music you enjoy or spending time with loved ones is a positive way to boost dopamine naturally.
However, indulging excessively in unhealthy foods like donuts or fast food, engaging in substance use or gambling can also spike dopamine levels and may lead to problematic behaviours.
For a healthier dopamine boost, Dr Hronis says we should consider activities such as:
- Physical activity: engaging in exercise you find enjoyable, such as walking in nature, running, team sports, dancing or joining a Zumba class can release dopamine, especially when done with friends.
- Positive social connections: spending quality time with friends and family releases lots of neurotransmitters in the brain, including dopamine, contributing to overall well-being.
- Engaging in meaningful hobbies: this could be art, listening to music, painting, gardening, reading a book or joining a book club. Any hobby you enjoy will trigger dopamine release.
- Set and achieve goals: setting and achieving realistic goals activates dopamine pathways. This could include study goals, career aspirations, health goals or completing household tasks on a checklist. Celebrating these achievements reinforces positive feelings and boosts motivation.
- Learning something new: when we study something new or interesting, or learn a new skill, our brain produces dopamine as a reward, increasing our motivation and satisfaction.
- Nutrition: eating nutritious food supports the production of neurotransmitters in your gut, including dopamine. Also, consuming adequate protein is important because it’s made up of amino acids, such as tyrosine, which plays a vital role in dopamine production.
- Meditation: guided meditations and breathing exercises may increase dopamine levels, reduce stress and improve concentration and focus.
While the tips above are a great guide, what triggers dopamine release can vary greatly from person to person. It will all depend on which healthy activities you find most enjoyable.
If you're curious about dopamine or other brain chemicals, or you would like to learn more about how our brain works, consider exploring a career in psychology.
Want to learn more about dopamine, plus get some tips to manage your study? Check out our Curiosities series on YouTube.
Curiosities
Psychology Curious Episode 5
Dopamine, mental health and study
Dr Anastasia Hronis
Duration 12min 16sec
00:00:00:09 - 00:00:29:07
Hello curious people. I'm Dr Anastasia Hronis, a clinical psychologist, lecturer and researcher in the Graduate School of Health at UTS. And I'm here to answer your curious questions about managing study and the impact of dopamine on your brain. This is Psychology Curious.
00:00:29:09 - 00:00:55:07
So we've had some questions sent in from our UTS community, and I'm going to be answering those now. What is dopamine and why is it important? Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in our brain and it plays a really important role in terms of survival of the species. Dopamine is involved in the role of pleasure. So when I experience something that feels good or pleasurable, dopamine is firing.
00:00:55:09 - 00:01:17:05
Now why that's important. If you think back to the stone age days, you know the prehistoric times, it was really hard to hunt and gather food. We needed some sort of sense of pleasure when we ate food, or even for reproduction of the species. So that would be dopamine firing to get that reinforcing and rewarding feeling, to make sure that we did it again.
00:01:17:07 - 00:01:43:08
Now, dopamine fires not only when we experience something pleasurable, but in the pursuit of something pleasurable. I'll give you an example. I have a cafe right downstairs from my office that has these delicious donuts. If I eat the donut, I get dopamine firing, it tastes great. But dopamine also fires when it's 3:00 in the afternoon and I'm thinking about grabbing a coffee, getting a donut before I even go down and buy the donut.
00:01:43:08 - 00:02:08:15
Dopamine is activated, driving me to go and get it. So dopamine comes about when we experience pleasure, but it also motivates us towards pleasure. What are some ways to boost your dopamine? This is a question that I get asked a lot, especially since the whole dopamine detox went viral last year on the internet. People are very interested in how they can sort of reset and get increased dopamine.
00:02:08:17 - 00:02:29:05
The thing I'll say is that we want to make sure that we're getting dopamine in really healthy ways, because there's lots of unhealthy ways that we can get it as well by excessively engaging in things like eating delicious unhealthy foods, or gambling and excessive gaming or internet use. So some healthy ways that we can get that dopamine release and feel the pleasure.
00:02:29:07 - 00:02:50:02
Things like exercise, going out for a walk or run, go to a Zumba class, go and dance. Anything that gets you moving that can be quite enjoyable gives you that release of dopamine, and even better if you're doing it with some friends. We also get lots of neuro transmitters released in the brain when we're with people that we love and we have a good time with.
00:02:50:07 - 00:03:25:10
Dopamine is one of those. So spending time with friends and family, having a laugh, we want that sense of enjoyment and pleasure. Also, engaging with your hobbies, things that are really enjoyable to you but are also meaningful. A really valuable things to make sure that you keep in your life. So whether that's things like engaging with family or pursuing, you know, something in your career or some sort of achievement that you're working towards, playing a sport with other people, any hobbies that you have that give you that sense of pleasure and enjoyment are also really important to keep going.
00:03:25:12 - 00:03:51:09
Some people's brains are more sensitive to dopamine than others. Good question. So everyone's brain is slightly different and everyone has a different baseline. So this is a different baseline in terms of how quickly and easily dopamine might get released in the brain. How sensitive we are to that dopamine and just kind of how much we experience that sense of pleasure that comes from the dopamine release as well.
00:03:51:13 - 00:04:11:23
So there are definitely differences in terms of this. There, there is a fair bit of research looking into whether this might also be linked to depression as well. We do know that dopamine is linked to certain conditions like ADHD. So dopamine is really important in terms of our general mental health and kind of how good we feel day to day.
00:04:12:00 - 00:04:42:12
But there certainly are those different differences to be mindful of. How can I stop scrolling on my phone and start studying? This is a really good question, and it is a question I get asked a lot, particularly in the clinic, when people are coming in wanting to sort of improve their study habits. I will say that it is really hard to sometimes stop scrolling on our phones, technology, social media apps, they're designed to be what we call sticky, so they're designed to keep us on that for as long as possible.
00:04:42:12 - 00:05:12:02
So it really is quite challenging sometimes to put the phone down or get off our computer and laptop looking at social media and start studying. What I would be recommending is anything that's a bit of a circuit breaker. So setting things like timers, putting your phone in another room, sometimes on flight mode to stop notifications coming through, anything that's going to be that circuit breaker and provide, a really definitive stop or at least barrier to you accessing apps on your phone.
00:05:12:04 - 00:05:41:23
Studying and good marks are important to me, so why am I procrastinating? Another good question. I will say that procrastination is a really common experience, and I think everyone at some point in their study journey will have procrastinated, whether that's studying for exams or starting assignments. Procrastination is really common. It's much more pleasurable to do the kind of thing that comes quick and easy to us, versus the thing that requires a lot of effort, which is study.
00:05:42:00 - 00:06:12:01
So I would be saying, don't feel bad about yourself if you are finding that you are procrastinating. It is a very common experience. But of course we want to find ways to overcome it. It might involve you setting sort of some time limits on yourself where you do engage with whatever it is that's fun and kind of pulling you in another direction, whether that's Netflix or social media, still do that to a degree, but make sure there are there is really definitive ways that you can then put that down and turn your attention towards study.
00:06:12:03 - 00:06:33:21
Some people actually try to do the study first, get a period of that out of the way before turning to something else that they can engage with. What are some tips to cope with stress and pressure during exam time? This is a good question and a question that we get asked a lot for students who are in the midst of exam period and study period.
00:06:34:01 - 00:06:54:16
It's certainly can be a really stressful time with a lot of pressure. The first thing I'll say before I jump into tips is be kind on yourself and have realistic expectations. We certainly don't want you over studying or trying to spend day in, day out in front of the textbooks in front of the laptop, studying. Have realistic expectations.
00:06:54:18 - 00:07:23:06
Also, make sure that you are balancing your study with other healthy and important things in your life. So, while you might dedicate some more of your time to study, make sure you still do see friends, see family, go out for walks, do exercise, still engage with your hobbies and the things that bring you enjoyment in life. Because these are the things that overall, again, are going to help you sustain yourself through the period of study and not burn out really quickly.
00:07:23:08 - 00:07:50:02
If you find yourself feeling particularly overwhelmed during the study period. You can also access things like mindfulness. There are lots of really great resources available online. Things like the headspace app or the calm app have some great guided meditations and mindfulness exercises that they can talk you through. There are lots available on YouTube as well, and even a quick and simple grounding exercise can be useful.
00:07:50:03 - 00:08:12:15
So this is something we refer to as the five, four, three grounding exercise, where you use the senses to just bring yourself to the present moment and really kind of be present with what is in the here and now. So it's five, four, three, five things you can see, four things that you can hear and three things that you can feel.
00:08:12:18 - 00:08:37:09
And when you do the feel one, I recommend that you don't sort of reach out and touch things around you, but notice what you can feel right now where you are. I can feel my feet against the floor. I can feel my hair against my neck without reaching out to touching it. This can be a really quick and easy exercise to implement wherever you are, that can really just reorient you and ground you in the present moment.
00:08:37:11 - 00:08:57:10
Help you take a few breaths before you continue forward with whatever it is you're doing. How can I manage disappointment if I don't get the marks I was hoping for? It is sometimes the case that, realistically, we don't get the marks that we're hoping for, and this can be disappointing. I would say disappointment is a normal, natural feeling.
00:08:57:12 - 00:09:17:00
You know, allow yourself to feel that. Don't push the feeling away. But we also don't want to get stuck in that feeling where it consumes us completely. If you feel disappointed, that's okay. But use that feeling to reflect on whether there could be anything different you might do the next time around, when it comes to study and exam period.
00:09:17:02 - 00:09:44:09
And again, channel that self-compassion. Exams can be challenging and competitive. So make sure that you are always staying kind to yourself through that internal voice, not being overly critical, but being kind and compassionate. Does cramming the night before an exam actually work? This is a great question, and I'm sure many of our students might have been in this situation where they find it's the night before an exam, and they're trying to do that last minute study.
00:09:44:11 - 00:10:07:23
Now, of course, the best way to study is to do as much of it in advance as possible. Make sure that we're doing it in a really balanced, healthy way. But there is something to be said for a bit of stress and pressure, meaning that we perform at a bit more of an optimal level. So if we are feeling a little bit of stress, we can somewhat more effectively study.
00:10:07:23 - 00:10:29:10
However, there's a caveat to that and that is the more stress we feel, the actual worse outperformance does get. So once we kind of cross that threshold, your study will be less effective and you might find that the next day you go to the exam, you really exhausted. You haven't necessarily retained the information because you haven't had a good night's sleep, and it ends up worse.
00:10:29:16 - 00:11:03:23
So there is something to be said for a bit of stress and pressure being helpful and effective, but we certainly don't want too much of that. And it might be that cramming the night before an exam isn't the best time to do it. If I'm feeling stressed and overwhelmed, when should I seek additional help? I think it's really important to be able to listen to yourself what's going on for you and know when to seek some extra help, like seeing a psychologist. If you are feeling like the stress and overwhelm of uni, work, or life in general is getting too much,
00:11:04:03 - 00:11:32:19
there are lots of services available that can help assist you. Some of the signs that, might indicate that you could do with some extra support in your life might be things like if you're feeling excessively stressed, worried, sad, or just out of sorts in some way. If you're having changes to your sleep patterns so you feel like maybe you're sleeping too much or not enough, finding it hard to get a sleep or waking frequently through the night.
00:11:32:21 - 00:12:02:16
If you're noticing that there's differences in your appetite, maybe you're eating much more or much less than you usually would, or even kind of changes to your weight. If you're feeling like you're more irritable, like things are getting on your nerves and you can't settle as easily as you may previously have been able to. These can all be signs that you might be experiencing some difficulty in your life with your mental health, and it could be worthwhile seeing a professional like a psychologist to get some extra support through this time.
00:12:02:18 - 00:12:09:01
That was all the questions for today. I hope you learned something new. Until next time, stay curious.
