dope!

Sweet, sweet dopamine. It's what makes new love feel so intense, so important, sometimes even plunging new lovers into pseudo-psychosis. It's why cocaine feels good. It's the big cheese in addiction [some would say one could develop an addiction to cheese via the dopamine/reward system]. It's also involved with motor control pathologies such as Parkinson's disease, but that's a topic for some other blog. For your reading pleasure, a selection of dopaminergic gems:

• Dude! It's a freaking visible synaptic vesicle! The report (with images and a cool, techie video), and a lay friendly-ish play-by-play.


• Smartass protazoans and horny, suicidal rats.


• Finally giving attention to a book I purchased five years ago. Patience, please with the long turns: Dopamine is involved in the impact of early social interaction on the brain structures associated with emotion regulation (of course there are other factors, but this post is dopamine-centric).

  
  The author (Schore) suggests that early maternal deprivation shapes the development of actual brain structures. You know, the brains we'll have for the rest of our lives. [Maternal deprivation = Infant stress that goes unregulated by the mother/primary caregiver - which doesn't have to look like an emaciated orphan rocking back and forth in his lonely crib, but any significant lack of attunement and responsiveness to an infant's emotional cues. The implications of some common parenting practices should thus be of concern.]

  Implications for later functioning may include impairments in attention and focus, hyperaggression, and other emotional dysregulation (possibly including depressive and/or manic states, anxiety, substance abuse - which is, after all, exogenous emotional regulation -- "self-medication" if you like).

  Even interpretations of later social interaction can be impaired: 1) failing to perceive the salience of social interactions, or 2) misinterpreting them. I'll explain: 1) Your friend's face bears markers of sadness, but you are unable to perceive them and thus cannot respond to his/her sadness, and are baffled as to why s/he is upset with you. 2) You tell your spouse/girlfriend/lover that you are angry with her. She asks for clarification. She may well want to understand you with the loveliest of intentions (or may simply be clueless and need some assistance), but the warped "lenses" through which you view certain interpersonal interactions leads you to believe she is attacking you, and, if you are dating a shrink, that she must be using her voodoo shrink powers to psychoanalyze you, inaccurately, and without your consent. [Don't get any ideas; this is a hypothetical situation used here for elaborative purposes.]



• A peculiar feeling: Mussels and their dopamine glue?