Dr. Anna Lembke

Those wires, the neurons, don't actually touch end-to-end.

There's a little space between them.

That space is called the synapse, okay?

And neurotransmitters bridge that gap between neurons to allow for fine-tuned control of those electrical circuits.

Dopamine has many different functions, but one of its most important functions is in pleasure, reward, and motivation.

Now, it's not the only neurotransmitter involved in that process, but it has become a kind of common currency for neuroscientists to measure the reinforcing potential of different substances and behaviors.

fundamentally, the more dopamine that is released in the brain's reward pathway and the faster that it's released, the more likely is that substance to be reinforcing or something that our brain recognizes as important for survival, something to approach, explore, and potentially exploit by doing it again and again.

Yes.

A more fundamental way to talk about it is it's related to reinforcement.

Okay.

So something that I do that's often associated with pleasure, but not exclusively associated with pleasure, which then I want to do again and again because my brain recognizes it as potentially important for survival.

Exactly.

And that's often what we call euphoric recall.

We tend to have this very vivid memory of initial exposure to highly emotionally potent stimuli, whether pleasure or pain.

Our brain really remembers that.

And if it's pleasurable, we marshal all of our available resources to try to get it again.

Yes.

So this is an extended metaphor that I use to try to explain at a very fundamental level how we process pleasure and pain.

And to me, one of the really interesting findings in neuroscience is that

pain and pleasure are actually co-located in the brain.