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Behavioral addiction essay
Behavioral addiction essay
Behavioral addiction essay
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Sydney Kaufmann/Natalie Wells
7-2
1/23/18
Dopamine
Have you ever gotten a good grade on a science test? How did you feel? Happy, right? Well, that feeling you got is called dopamine. Dopamine controls the brain's reward center and gives you a good feeling. It also helps control movement and emotional responses. Dopamine functions as a neurotransmitter-which is a chemical released by nerve cells to send messages to other nerve cells. The brain has many routes for dopamine, and one path plays a role in behavior motivated by gain and reward. If you have a dopamine shortage, the symptom is Parkinson’s Disease. Parkinson’s Disease is a nerve disease that affects movement. But, if it is just low dopamine activity, you may be more drawn to addiction.
Dopamine sends signals to other nerve cells in the brain, which regulates movement, motivation, emotion, and feelings of pleasure.
Dopamine gives a person the willingness, and attention span, to work; which means with higher levels of dopamine in synapses, the willingness to work is also higher. In a body with ADHD, the dopamine levels are substantially lower ...
Parkinson's is an idiopathic, multifactorial neurodegenerative disease that attacks neurotransmitters in the brain called dopamine. Dopamine is concentrated in a specific area of the brain called the substantia nigra. The neurotransmitter dopamine is a chemical that regulates muscle movement and emotion. Dopamine is responsible for relaying messages between the substantia nigra and other parts of the brain to control body movement. The death of these neurotransmitters affects the central nervous system. The most common symptoms are movement related, including shaking, rigidity, slowness of movement and difficulty with posture. Behavioral problems may arise as the disease progresses. Due to the loss of dopamine, Parkinson's patients will often experience depression and some compulsive behavior. In advanced stages of the disease dementia will sometimes occur. The implications of the disease on the anatomy and physiology of the respiratory and phonatory systems significantly control speech.
The path physiology of Parkinson’s disease is the pathogenesis if Parkinson disease is unknown. Epidemiologic data suggest genetic, viral, and environmental toxins as possible causes. Nigral and basal loss of neurons with depletion of dopamine, an inhibitory neurotransmitter, is the principal biochemical alteration in Parkinson disease. Symptoms in basal ganglia disorders result from an imbalance of dopaminergic (inhibitory) and cholinergic (excitatory) activity in the caudate and putamen of the basal ganglia.
Also, involved in chemistry are dopamine and norepinephrine, chemical cousins of amphetamines. Dopamine, a neurochemical released by PEA, makes us feel good.(1) A recent study done at Emory University shows that female voles (small rodents) choose their mates in response to dopamine being released in their brains. When injected with dopamine in a male vole's presence, the female will pick him out of a crowd later.
Drugs seem to cause surges in dopamine neurotransmitters and other pleasure brain messengers. However, the brain quickly adapts and these circuits desensitize, which allows for withdrawal symptoms to occur (3). Drug addiction works on some of the same neurobiological mechanisms that aid in learning and memories (3). "This new view of dopamine as an aid to learning rather than a pleasure mediator may help explain why many addictive drugs, which unleash massive surges of the neurotransmitter in the brain, can drive continued use without producing pleasure-as when cocaine addicts continue to take hits long after the euphoric effects of the drug have worn off or when smokers smoke after cigarettes become distasteful." (4)
Dopamine is a reward chemical in the brain which rewards us every time we do something positive. Addiction comes from that chemical and can be created from various activities. Someone might enjoy jumping off a cliff, eating food, taking drugs or even play video games. Every time your brain enjoys something, dopamine is release and you start feeling good. The reason drug addiction is more complex, your brain will create more dopamine the more drugs you take. Eventually, your body will fight off the foreign product and dopamine will be created in too high dosage. Your body will become addicted to the dopamine, not the drug as previously thought by doctors.
My Strange Addiction. My strange addiction is a show that showcases those whom have a weird obsession that in some way affects their everyday lives and those around them lives also. In the episode observed, a 53-year-old woman was obsessed with consuming her own urine. I say consume, because this woman would consume in what the show stated “nearly all her urine” in anyway possible (Violet Media 2012). This women would drink her own urine, she would age the urine and use it as lotion, she would brush her teeth with her urine, drink it through her nostrils, and she would even consume it through her eyeballs, by putting little eyes cups full of urine over them.
Neurotransmission are the body’s regular chemical messengers which transfer data from one neuron to another. Thus, they are unquestionably one of the building blocks of behaviour. Neurotransmitters are potent chemicals that adjust various physical and responsive processes such as psychological performance, emotional conditions and agony reaction. Thence, relations between neurotransmitters and the brain chemicals have an unfathomable impact on general health and wellbeing. However, like hormones, if neurotransmitter levels are insufficient these stimulating and rousing signals will be absent; thus, an individual may feel very stressed, blunt and unambiguously out of control. Simply, the method by which these messages are sent is called neurotransmission. The neurotransmitters are kept in the neurons’ terminal buttons. In addition, neurotransmitters have many effects on human behaviour; as it regulates sleep, modifies mood and thought processes, controls ability to focus, concentrate, and remember things, and controls the appetite centre of the brain. They have been displayed to have a variety of distinct effects on human behaviour. Indeed, neurotransmission triggers behaviour, in the same way as it activates mood, memory, sexual arousal, and mental illness. Furthermore, neurotransmitters play a huge role in everyday life and functioning. Scientists do not yet know exactly how many neurotransmitters exist, but more than 100 chemical messengers have been recognized. The effect of acetylcholine on memory and muscle contraction; the effect of serotonin on sleep and emotion and the effect of noradrenaline on depression and alertness will all be discussed, with var...
Hundreds of professional athletes across the world have been accused of taking performance enhancing drugs. The use of performance-enhancing drugs by professional athletes, or "doping", has been acknowledged as a problem since at least the 1960s. The first use of performance-enhancing drugs has been traced back to the first Olympics in Greece. Scandinavian mythology says Berserkers could drink a concoction prepared from a mushroom, to increase their physical power a dozen times. “We have to make some radical move to get the attention of everyone. Cheaters can't win and steroids have put us in the position that it's OK to cheat.” (Lou Brock, 2009) This quote describes how almost every professional player feels when they know that their opponents are cheating. Performance enhancing drugs should be banned and players should be punished more harshly because it leads to numerous diseases, young athletes would be tempted to take it, and players would be unpredictable and can cause.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that has many different uses in the human brain and body. Dopamine has control over the reward system and this is why it has been referred to as the feel good chemical. Dopamine can have many different results depending on the person. Everyone reacts different
like a lot of my close friends I look around and am disappointed in a lot of what I see every day walking the halls of my university. All around there are people on their phones or their tablets looking through information channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and the Internet. Through research, I came across a few articles that attributed the addictiveness of these information channels to a dopamine-opioid complementary system within the brain and the variable ratio reinforcement schedule (VRS). The main research was done on dopamine’s effect on anticipation and human behavior.
“Dopamine System May Be the Key to Addiction.” News Briefs. Nature Magazine. May-June 2012. National Drug Strategy Network. Web. 20 Apr. 2015
Wise, Roy A. “Role of dopamine in food reward and reinforcement”. National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 15 June 2006. Web. 24 Apr. 2014. .
Nearly all drugs of abuse increase dopamine release. Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter in drug abuse and addiction. Dopamine plays a role in reward-motivated behaviors, motor control and important hormones. It’s known as the “feel good hormone” which is why people abuse drugs that increase the release of dopamine. Since life is unpredictable, our brains have evolved the ability to remodel themselves in response to our experiences.