Gemma Speck

Literally, the cells that could produce this vital chemical die.

And the reason that we don't know, we don't know why that happens.

Like they have some, there's all these theories, right?

Genetics obviously plays a big role in it.

Exposure to certain chemicals also, but we don't really know why it's just those cells that die off.

And when they do, it means that less dopamine is available.

And that seems to be directly correlated to this reduction in the ability to control deliberate or unconscious and conscious movement to just get our body to do what we want it to do.

People with Parkinson's will talk about wanting, like, say, for example, you have like a cup of juice, I don't know, a cup of tea in front of you.

and you want to reach out and grab it and take a sip.

People with Parkinson's will talk about sitting there, having the thought, willing their arm, begging their arm to just simply do... It's so easy, just move, just move, grab the cup, and it just doesn't work.

And what's happening is that the command gets stuck in the brain because there aren't enough of those little dopamine messages to...

shoot the message down and get our body to comply.

So when people talk about dopamine and only talk about it in reference to happiness and pleasure, they miss this vital element.

And we're going to talk a little bit more about why that's so important in a second.

But the final big thing dopamine is implicated in is learning, which makes sense because it is what drives us to seek out novelty and seek out newness because of the anticipation of excitement, reward, stimulation, new experiences, etc.

It is especially linked to the formation of emotional memories.

This was indicated by a 2021 study where they talked about how dopamine... Oh my God, what was the study about again?

It's basically emotional music...

triggered dopamine and actually meant that we could memorize lyrics better because of that emotional link.

There was also another paper I think published the same year in molecular psychiatry that talks about how dopamine is linked to stronger fear memories, which is funny because our traditional understanding of dopamine is this happy hormone.