Dopamine, explained (Part II)

Dopamine detoxing, hacking, and fasting: Is any of it real?

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May 22, 2024, Vox

Dopamine is involved in both motivation and learning, but the two processes don’t exist in isolation. Motivation focuses your learning efforts, and you can learn to be motivated to do something. Stephanie Borgland, a neuroscientist at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the University of Calgary, told me, for instance, that dopamine neurons send signals to the prefrontal cortex that appear to help you figure out what you should pay attention to. Dopamine also drives the formation of habits, behaviors we’ve learned to be motivated to do, like checking Instagram for fresh notifications when we’re craving social validation.

The problem, Borgland said, is that “your brain doesn’t know whether it’s developing a new skill, or whether it’s about to be a bad habit.”

Once a habit forms, it’s out of the dopamine system’s hands — and this can create a rift between what makes us happy, and what we want. This is why someone with substance abuse disorder can feel compelled to use drugs without deriving pleasure from it. New drugs like Ozempic, which act on neurons that receive dopamine signals, might even be able to close that gap, bringing cravings down to a more manageable intensity.

The deep connection between addiction and dopamine makes the chemical an easy target for self-help guides, something to “optimize” to facilitate healthier relationships with drugs, work, and technology. But Borgland thinks it’s mostly “a lot of bullshit.” And she’s not alone.

Dopamine detoxing, hacking, and fasting: is any of it real?

As academic dopamine research flourished, the chemical started popping up in movies, music, and tattoo trends. In 2014, I had a friend stick-and-poke a dopamine molecule tattoo on my ribcage. But today, dopamine is presented by celebrity scientists like Huberman and Anna Lembke, author of the bestselling book Dopamine Nation, as both the root cause and the solution du jour of most mental maladies — often as a strange blend of cognitive behavioral therapy, engineering optimization, and “wellness” a la Goop.

That said, not one neuroscientist I spoke to (nor, for what it’s worth, any neuroscientist I interacted with during my time in academia) felt good about the portrayal of dopamine in the media. When asked about wellness advice doled out by Huberman and other optimization-minded influencers, Narayanan said they are “doing science and the general public a disservice by oversimplifying a complex topic.”

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