Your Brain on Food: How Chemicals Control Your Thoughts and Feelings by Gary Wenk

Author:Gary Wenk [Wenk, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Neuroscience, Psychology
ISBN: 9780195388541
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2010-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

SUMMARY

Drugs that enhance the function of dopamine and norepinephrine (e.g., cocaine, mescaline, amphetamine, and its related chemicals such as ecstasy) produce a pleasurable feeling of euphoria and enhanced arousal; therefore, these drugs are heavily abused. If we look at the dopamine system in particular, we can see that it is designed to make us feel pleasure, an experience that reinforces our basic survival needs such as eating and having sex. Drugs that produce euphoria do so because they take advantage of and are reinforced by this reward system. By contrast, dysfunction of our dopamine system or ingestion of drugs that block dopamine (e.g., the antipsychotics) is famous for taking away our ability to experience pleasure. In addition, because of the presence of dopamine in our basal ganglia, blocking dopamine interferes with our ability to move our bodies smoothly and easily. Norepinephrine-containing neurons project very broadly and diffusely throughout the brain, giving a clue to its function as well. When drugs stimulate norepinephrine receptors, we experience a dose-dependent transition from simple arousal to a full-blown response associated with a rapidly beating heart and fast respiration. We become aroused and ready for either pleasure or pain: it does not matter which to our brain, the response is the same.

By now you have a sense of the interwoven roles of dopamine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine in the control of movement, reward, mood, arousal, and learning and attention. By considering how various drugs manipulate these neurotransmitter systems within the brain, scientists have discovered some consistent patterns that allow us to make predictions about what to expect when specific types of drugs are taken. The same holds true for the neurotransmitter system mentioned several times in this chapter: serotonin. What are the consequences of its manipulation in the brain? Read on.

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