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What is dopamine?
What is dopamine?
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in our brain – that means, a substance that is released by nerve cells to communicate with other nerve cells. It has many functions, for example in motivation, our sleep-wake-cycle, attention or for starting movements. For more, details, read here.
One very famous function of dopamine is for signalling reward. It is sometimes called the reward hormone or happiness hormone, because dopamine is released when we receive something good, or reach a goal. This function was found also in many other animals. It seems that the reward function of dopamine is quite universal among animals.
It makes sense that dopamine is also very important for associative learning (see previous page). Research has shown that in mammals, dopamine cells get activated only by unexpected rewards. Therefore, it is said that these dopamine neurons signal a "prediction error" - they signal how much better or worse than expected something is. Here you can find one of the studies that made this finding.
Addiction is thought to come by an over-activated dopamine system. We get addicted to the good feeling of the dopamine reward signal, and want it again and again. But because it gets activated only by rewards that are better than expected, addicts need more and more. Read on here!
Fruit flies, too, have dopamine neurons, also they signal reward. However, it was shown that in flies some dopamine neurons signal reward, other punishment. Similar things have meanwhile also been found in mammals. We are researching these reward and punishment signals in some of our research projects.
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