have you heard about the ‘love harmone‘? That’s right, the harmone that is responsible for the wonderful feelings we go through when in love..yipppeee!

After decades of harmonal research and years of advances in molecular biology, scientists feel there is a great part that needs to be learned about the impact of harmones on our human brain but a lot of insight has been gained into ‘dopamine’ in the recent years.

Dopamine has been found in abundance in first-time & new lovers and is believed to be responsible for a lot of the ‘neck-deep in love emotions‘ that they go through. Strangely, the same parts of the brain that display activity in lovers are active in addicts as well (Whoever thought love was not an addiction) !

That apart, some research (sorry, forgot the page where I read it) has also indicated that teaching methods, based on rewards, could be developed among lab rats to teach them new skills and the sure way to know if they are working is by checking for ….thats right, dopamine release!! So, it is called the ‘reward harmone‘ in some circles. However, some more recent studies argue that dopamine really signals ‘desire’ than ‘pleasure’. I would say, how can we have one without the other !

But, the large part of established research suggests that the chief role of dopamine is to create the feeling of pleasure & enjoyment. So, everything that you have enjoyed so far is likely the result of the production of this silly little chemical inside your brain’s hypothalamus (a bean sized part of the brain that connects to the pitutary gland, usually larger in men than in women)! I am trying to make a list of all those days in my life that I felt truly happy and thank dopamine for it ..

Even addictions to drugs and other inveterate habits is being attributed to dopamine! What happens is that these chemical substances increase the lifetime of dopamine in our body (by delaying its uptake as a neurotransmitter) and thus makes the subject feel haaaappppyyyy forrrr aaaaa llooooonggggg tiimmmmeeee .. yawn yawn !

Till recent years, dopamine was thought to be just a pre-cursor to adrenalin and noradrenaline (something in the lines of, just before you get excited, your brain’s reward center gets excited too!) but Arvid Carlsson won the 2000 nobel prize in physiology/medicine for showing that dopamine is not only this, but a neurotransmitter as well!

So, I guess it could be a potential boon for all those tested teachers and parents out there to find out what kicks the dopamine of their kids and act accordingly!

Disruption of dopamine has been linked to a lot of psychological disorders like schizophrenia, parkinson’s disease and psychosis.

Next time you catch yourself singing ‘what kicks your dopamine’, dont forget that I warned you about how addictive that song is !