Shadowing Practice: Controlling Your Dopamine for Motivation, Focus & Satisfaction | Huberman Lab Essentials - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
1
Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health,
2
physical health, and performance.
3
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
4
Today, we are going to talk all about dopamine and what drives you to do the things that you do.
5
We're going to talk about motivation and desire and craving, but also how dopamine relates to satisfaction and our feelings of wellbeing.
6
So let's talk about dopamine.
7
If ever you've interacted with somebody who just doesn't seem to have any drive, they've given up, or if you've interacted with somebody who seems to have endless drive and energy,
8
what you are looking at there in those two circumstances is
9
without question a difference in the level of dopamine circulating in their system.
10
Dopamine is what we call a neuromodulator.
11
Neuromodulators are different than neurotransmitters.
12
Neurotransmitters are involved in the dialogue between neurons, whereas neuromodulators influence the communication of many neurons.
13
In the nervous system, what this means is
14
that dopamine release changes the probability that certain neural circuits will be active and that other neural circuits will be inactive.
15
So how does dopamine work and what does it do?
16
Well, first of all, it is not just responsible for pleasure.
17
It is responsible for motivation and drive also for craving.
18
Those three things are sort of the same, motivation, drive, and craving.
19
It also controls time perception.
20
This turns out to be important to not end up addicted to substances, but it also turns out to be very important to sustain effort and be a happy person over long periods of time,
21
which I think most everybody wants.
22
Dopamine is also vitally important for movement.
23
I'll explain the neural circuits for dopamine and mindset and dopamine in movement in a moment,
24
But in diseases like Parkinson's or Lewy body's dementia, which is similar to Parkinson's in many ways,
25
there's a depletion or death of dopamine neurons at a particular location in the brain, which leads to shaky movements,
26
challenges in speaking, challenges in particular in initiating movement.
27
And because dopamine is depleted elsewhere too,
28
people with Parkinson's and Lewy body dementia also experience drops in motivation and affect,
29
meaning mood, they tend to get depressed and so on.
30
When those people are properly treated, they can recover some fluidity of movement, some ability to initiate movement,
31
and almost without question, those people feel better psychologically, not just because they can move, but also because dopamine impacts mood and motivation.
32
So what are the underlying neural circuits?
33
You have two main neural circuits in the brain that dopamine uses in order to exert all its effects.
34
One mainly for movement, right?
35
This is the substantia nigra to dorsal striatum.
36
And we've got this other pathway, the so-called mesocortical limbic pathway that's for reward, reinforcement, and motivation.
37
Now, the other things I understand about dopamine is that the way
38
that dopamine is released in the brain and body can differ.
39
There's local release, what we call synaptic release, and then there's volumetric release.
40
So volumetric release is like dumping all this dopamine out into the system.
41
So dopamine is incredible because it can change the way
42
that our neural circuits work at a local scale and at a very broad scale.
43
So if I were to just put a really simple message around dopamine,
44
it would be, there's a molecule in your brain and body that when released tends to make you look outside yourself,
45
pursue things outside yourself, and to crave things outside yourself.
46
Dopamine is a universal currency in all mammals, but especially in humans for moving us toward goals
47
and how much dopamine is in our system at any one
48
time compared to how much dopamine was in our system a few minutes ago,
49
that dictates your so-called quality of life and your desire to pursue things.
50
This is important.
51
Your experience of life and your level of motivation
52
and drive depends on how much dopamine you have relative to your recent experience.
53
This is why when you repeatedly engage in something that you enjoy, your threshold for enjoyment goes up and up and up.
54
So I want to talk about that process
55
and I want to explain how that process works because
56
if you understand that process and you understand some of these schedules and kinetics as we call them around dopamine,
57
you will be in a terrific position to modulate and control your own dopamine release for optimal motivation and drive.
58
While most experiences and most things that we do and take and eat and et cetera, won't create enormous highs and enormous lows in dopamine,
59
even subtle fluctuations in dopamine really shape our perception of life and what we're capable of and how we feel.
60
And so we want to guard those and we want to understand them.
61
All of us have different baseline levels of dopamine.
62
Some of this is sure to be genetic.
63
Some people just simply ride at a level a little bit higher.
64
Some people are a little less excitable.
65
What dopamine does is dopamine really colors the subjective experience of an activity to make it more pleasurable,
66
to make it something that you want more of.
67
So what sorts of activities, what sorts of things increase dopamine And how much do they increase dopamine?
68
Well, let's take a look at some typical things that people do out there or ingest out there.
69
And let's ask how much dopamine is increased above baseline.
70
Chocolate will increase your baseline level of dopamine 1.5 times, okay?
71
So it's a pretty substantial increase in dopamine.
72
It's transient, it goes away after a few minutes or even a few seconds.
73
Sex, both the pursuit of sex and the act of sex increases dopamine two times.
74
Nicotine, in particular nicotine that is smoked like cigarettes and so forth,
75
increases dopamine two and a half times above baseline.
76
It is very short lived.
77
Cocaine will increase the level of dopamine in the bloodstream two and a half times above baseline.
78
And amphetamine, another drug that increases dopamine,
79
will increase the amount of dopamine in the bloodstream 10 times above baseline, a tremendous increase in dopamine.
80
Exercise.
81
Now, exercise will have a different impact on the levels of dopamine, depending on how much somebody subjectively enjoys that exercise.
82
So if you're somebody who loves running, chances are it's going to increase your levels of dopamine two times above your baseline,
83
not unlike sex.
84
People who dislike exercise will achieve less dopamine increase or no increase in dopamine from exercise.
85
And if you like other forms of exercise like yoga or weightlifting or swimming or what have you,
86
again, it's going to vary by your subjective experience of whether or not you enjoy that activity.
87
This is important and it brings us back to something that we talked about earlier.
88
Remember that mesocortico limbic pathway?
89
Well, the cortical part is important.
90
The cortical part actually has a very specific part, which is your prefrontal cortex.
91
The area of your forebrain that's involved in thinking and planning
92
and involved in assigning a rational explanation to something and involved in assigning a subjective experience to something.
93
So certain things, chemicals have a universal effect.
94
They make everybody's dopamine go up.
95
So some people like chocolate, some people don't, of course, but in general, it causes this increase in dopamine.
96
But sex, nicotine, cocaine, amphetamine, those things cause increases in dopamine in everybody that takes them.
97
Now I've been alluding to this dopamine peaks versus dopamine baseline thing since the beginning of the episode.
98
Now let's really drill into what this means and how to leverage it for our own purposes.
99
In order to do that, let's take a step back and ask, why would we have a dopamine system like this?
100
Why would we have a dopamine system at all?
101
Well, we have to remember what our species' primary interest is.
102
Our species, like all species, has a main interest, and that's to make more of itself.
103
It's not just about sex and reproduction, it's about foraging for resources.
104
Resources can be food, it can be water, it can be salt, can be shelter, can be social connection.
105
Dopamine is the universal currency of foraging and seeking, right?
106
We call, sometimes talk about motivation and craving, but what we mean in the evolutionary adaptive context, what we mean is foraging and seeking,
107
seeking water, seeking food, seeking mates, seeking things that make us feel good and avoiding things that don't make us feel good,
108
but in particular, seeking things that will provide sustenance
109
and pleasure in the short term and will extend the species in the long term.
110
Once we understand that dopamine is a driver for us to seek things, it makes perfect sense as to why it would have a baseline level and it would have peaks,
111
and that the baseline and peaks would be related in some sort of direct way.
112
Here's what I mean by that.
113
Let's say that you were not alive now, but you were alive 10,000 years ago,
114
and you woke up and you looked and you realized you had minimal water and you had minimal food left.
115
You need to be able to generate the energy to go seek those things.
116
So dopamine drives you to go out and look for things.
117
Maybe you hunt an animal and kill it, or you find an animal that was recently killed and you decide to take the meat.
118
You are going to achieve, or I should say, experience some sort of dopamine release.
119
You found the reward, that's great, but then it needs to return to some lower level.
120
Why?
121
Well, because if you just stayed there, you would never continue to forage for more.
122
It doesn't just increase your baseline and then stay there.
123
It goes back down.
124
And what's very important to understand is that it doesn't just go back down to the level it was before.
125
It goes down to a level below what it was before you went out seeking that thing.
126
We really all have a sort of dopamine set point.
127
And if we continue to indulge in the same behaviors
128
or even different behaviors that increase our dopamine in these big peaks over and over and over again,
129
we won't experience the same level of joy from those behaviors or from anything at all.
130
Now that has a name, it's called addiction, but even for people who aren't addicted,
131
even for people don't have an attachment to any specific substance or behavior, this drop below baseline after any peak in dopamine is substantial
132
and it governs whether or not we are going to feel motivated to continue to pursue other things.
133
Fortunately, there's a way to work with this such that we can constantly stay motivated, but also keep that baseline of dopamine at an appropriate healthy level.
134
Earlier, we were talking about how dopamine is released between neurons, and I mentioned two ways.
135
One is into the synapse, where it can activate the postsynaptic neuron, and the other was what I called volumetric release, where it is distributed more broadly.
136
It's released out over a bunch of neurons.
137
In both cases, it's released from these things we call synaptic vesicles, literally little bubbles, tiny, tiny little bubbles that contain dopamine.
138
They get vomited out into the area or into the synapse.
139
We can only deploy dopamine that is ready to be deployed.
140
That's packaged in those little vesicles and ready to go.
141
It's just the readily releasable pool.
142
And now it should make perfect sense why if you take something or do something that leads to huge increases in dopamine,
143
afterward, your baseline should drop because there isn't a lot of dopamine around to keep your baseline going.
144
Fortunately, most people do not experience or pursue enormous increases in dopamine leading to these severe drops in baseline.
145
Many people do, however, and that's what we call addiction.
146
When somebody pursues a drug or an activity that leads to huge increases in dopamine, and now you understand that afterward,
147
the baseline of dopamine drops because of depletion of dopamine, the readily releasable pool, The dopamine is literally not around to be released.
148
And so people feel pretty lousy.
149
And many people make the mistake of then going and pursuing the dopamine evoking, the dopamine releasing activity or substance again,
150
thinking mistakenly that it's going to bring up their baseline.
151
It's going to give them that peak again.
152
Not only does it not give them a peak, their baseline gets lower and lower because they're depleting dopamine more and more and more.
153
And eventually what typically happens is they will stop getting dopamine release from that activity as well.
154
And then they drop into a pretty serious depression.
155
Now, of course, we all should engage in activities that we enjoy.
156
The key thing is to understand this relationship between the peaks and the baseline and to understand how they influence one another.
157
So let's talk about the optimal way to engage in activities or to consume things that evoke dopamine.
158
How are we supposed to engage with these dopamine evoking activities in ways that are healthy and beneficial for us.
159
How do we achieve these peaks, which are so central to our wellbeing and experience of life without dropping our baseline?
160
And the key lies in intermittent release of dopamine.
161
The real key is to not expect or chase high levels of dopamine release every time we engage in these activities.
162
Intermittent reward schedules are the central schedule by which casinos keep you gambling,
163
the central schedule by which elusive partners or potential partners keep you texting and pursuing on either side of the relationship.
164
Intermittent schedules are the way that the internet and social media and all highly engaging activities keep you motivated and pursuing.
165
There's something called dopamine reward prediction error.
166
When we expect something to happen, we are highly motivated to pursue it.
167
If it happens, great, we get the reward.
168
The reward comes in various chemical forms, including dopamine.
169
And we are more likely to engage in that behavior again.
170
This is the basis of casino gambling.
171
This is how they keep you going back again and again and again, even though on average, the house really does win.
172
You can transplant that example to any number of different pleasureful activities.
173
Now, some activities naturally have this intermittent property woven into them, right?
174
We sometimes have classes that we like and other classes we don't like.
175
We don't always get straight A's.
176
Sometimes we don't get rewarded with the outcome that we would like.
177
But understand that your ability to experience motivation
178
and pleasure for what comes next is dictated by how much motivation and pleasure and dopamine you experienced prior.
179
There's one exception, which is caffeine because it does upregulate these D2, D3 receptors.
180
So it actually makes whatever dopamine is released by
181
that activity more accessible or more functional within the biochemistry and the pathways of your brain and body.
182
While coffee or tea or other forms of caffeine will have this effect of increasing dopamine receptors,
183
yerba mate, something I've talked about before on this podcast, has some interesting properties.
184
First of all, it contains caffeine.
185
It's also high in antioxidants.
186
It also contains something called GLP-1, which is favorable for management of blood sugar levels.
187
Yerba mate, it turns out, has also been shown to be neuroprotective specifically for dopaminergic neurons.
188
Ingestion of yerba mate
189
and some of the compounds within yerba mate can actually serve
190
to preserve the survival of dopamine neurons in both the movement-related pathway and the motivation pathway.
191
If one were going to consume caffeine, you might consider consuming that caffeine in the form of yerba mate,
192
both for sake of upregulating dopamine receptors and getting more of a dopamine increase, and of course for the stimulant properties of caffeine,
193
if that's what you're seeking.
194
And in addition to that, because yerba mate does appear to have some sort of neuroprotective and in particular dopamine neuron protective properties.
195
There's also evidence that two substances that greatly increase dopamine,
196
namely amphetamine and cocaine, can cause long-term problems with the dopaminergic pathways.
197
This is largely based on a study that was published some years ago, 2003, and the title of the paper pretty much tells the story,
198
Amphetamine or Cocaine Limits the Ability of Later Experience to Promote Structural Plasticity in the Neocortex and Nucleus Accumbens.
199
Neocortex is the outer shell of the brain,
200
more or less, and the nucleus accumbens is part of that mesolimbic dopamine pathway for motivation, drive, and reinforcement.
201
Neuroplasticity, of course, is the brain's ability to change in response to experience,
202
and neuroplasticity is the basis of learning and memory and essentially remodeling of our neural circuitry in positive ways of all kinds.
203
And this study was really one of the first to show
204
that ingesting amphetamine and cocaine because of the high peak in dopamine that it creates and the low dopamine state,
205
the baseline drop that it creates afterwards limits plasticity and learning subsequent to taking amphetamine and cocaine.
206
This should serve as a serious cautionary note that amphetamine and cocaine not only can cause a drop in baseline dopamine,
207
but can actually put the brain into a state in which it cannot learn and modify itself to get better, at least for some period of time.
208
There are activities that we can do that will give us healthy,
209
sustained increases in dopamine, both the peaks when they happen and to maintain or even increase our baseline levels of dopamine.
210
What are some of these activities?
211
Well, in recent years, there's been a trend toward more people doing so-called cold exposure, getting into cold showers, taking ice baths,
212
exposing oneself to cold water of various kinds can in fact increase our levels of dopamine as well as the neuromodulator, neuro-apinephrine.
213
First of all, some of the safety parameters.
214
Let's establish those first.
215
Getting into very, very cold water, you know, 30 degree Fahrenheit or even low 40 degree Fahrenheit can put somebody into a state of cold water shock.
216
I mean, people can die doing that.
217
So obviously you want to approach this with some caution, but for most people getting into 60 degree water
218
or 50 degree water can have tremendously beneficial results on your neuromodulator systems, including dopamine.
219
What temperature of water you can tolerate will depend on how cold water adapted you are
220
and how familiar you are with the experience of getting into cold water.
221
Now the study human physiological responses to immersion into water of different temperatures.
222
It's a really interesting study.
223
They looked at people getting exposed to water that was warm, moderately cold, or very cold.
224
Upon getting into cold water, the changes in adrenaline and noradrenaline, epinephrine and norepinephrine were immediate.
225
But then what was interesting is they observed that dopamine levels started to rise somewhat slowly and then continued to rise
226
and reach levels as high as 2.5 times above baseline.
227
That's a remarkably high increase.
228
Why would that be good?
229
Up until now, I've basically said, getting increases in dopamine are detrimental to your baseline.
230
Well, this does appear to raise the baseline of dopamine for substantial periods of time.
231
And most people report feeling a heightened level of calm and focus after getting out of cold water.
232
So cold water exposure turns out be a very potent stimulus for shifting the entire milieu,
233
the entire environment of our brain and body and allowing many people to feel much, much better for a substantial period of time.
234
It can be very stimulating.
235
So typically doing it early in the day, it's going to be better.
236
Some people will indeed do that seven days a week, other people, three days a week, other people every once in a while.
237
What I can say is once you become cold water adapted, Once it no longer has the same impact of novelty,
238
then it will no longer evoke this release.
239
Now I'd like to talk about the positive aspects of rewards for our behavior
240
and the negative aspects of rewards for our behavior.
241
And from that, I will suggest a protocol by
242
which you can achieve a better relationship to your activities and to your dopamine system.
243
In fact, it will help tune up your dopamine system for discipline, hard work, and motivation.
244
Hard work is hard.
245
Most people work hard in order to achieve some end goal.
246
End goals are terrific and rewards are terrific, whether or not they are monetary, social, or any kind.
247
However, because of the way that dopamine relates to our perception of time,
248
working hard at something for sake of a reward that comes afterward
249
can make the hard work much more challenging and make us much less likely to lean into hard work in the future.
250
Let me give you a couple examples by way of data and experiments.
251
There's a classic experiment done actually at Stanford many years ago in which children in nursery school and kindergarten drew pictures.
252
And they drew pictures because they like to draw.
253
The researchers took kids that like to draw and they started giving them a reward for drawing.
254
The reward generally was a gold star or something that a young child would find rewarding.
255
Then they stopped giving them the gold star.
256
And what they found is the children had a much lower tendency to draw on their own, no reward.
257
Now, remember, this was an activity that prior to receiving a reward, the children intrinsically enjoyed and selected to do.
258
What this relates to is so-called intrinsic versus extrinsic reinforcement.
259
When we receive rewards, even if we give ourselves rewards for something,
260
we tend to associate less pleasure with the actual activity itself that evoked the reward.
261
If you get a peak in dopamine from a reward, it's going to lower your baseline.
262
And the cognitive interpretation is that you didn't really do the activity because you enjoyed the activity, you did it for the reward.
263
It's also important to understand that dopamine controls our perception of time.
264
When we engage in an activity, let's say school or hard work of any kind or exercise,
265
because of the reward we are going to give ourselves or receive at the end,
266
we actually are extending the time bin over which we are analyzing or perceiving that experience.
267
And because the reward comes at the end,
268
we start to dissociate the neural circuits for dopamine and reward that would have normally been active during the activity.
269
And we have the experience of less and less pleasure from that particular activity while we're doing it.
270
Now, this is the antithesis of growth mindset, which is this striving to be better, to be in this mindset of I'm not there yet,
271
but striving itself is the end goal.
272
And that of course delivers you to tremendous performance has been observed over and over and over again, that people that have growth mindset,
273
kids that have growth mindset end up performing very well because they're focused on the effort itself.
274
And all of us can cultivate growth mindset.
275
The neural mechanism of cultivating growth mindset involves learning to access the rewards from effort and doing.
276
And that's hard to do because you have to engage this prefrontal component of the mesolimbic circuit.
277
You have to tell yourself, okay, this effort is great.
278
This effort is pleasureful what you find over time is
279
that you can evoke dopamine release from the friction and the challenge that you happen to be in.
280
The beauty of this mesolimbic reward pathway is that it includes the forebrain.
281
So you can tell yourself the effort part is the good part.
282
I know it's painful.
283
I know this doesn't feel good, but I'm focused on this.
284
I'm going to start to access the reward.
285
You will find the rewards, meaning the dopamine release inside of effort if you repeat this over and over again.
286
And what's beautiful about it is that it starts to become reflexive for all types of effort.
287
When we focus only on the trophy, only on the grade, only on the win as the reward, you undermine that entire process.
288
So how do you do this?
289
You do this in those moments of the most intense friction, you tell yourself that in that moment,
290
you are doing it by choice and you're doing it because you love it.
291
The ability to access this pleasure from effort aspect of our
292
dopaminergic circuitry is without question the most powerful aspect of dopamine and our biology of dopamine.
293
And the beautiful thing is it's accessible to all of us.
294
And just to really underscore the things that can interfere with and prevent you from getting dopamine release from effort itself,
295
don't spike dopamine prior to engaging in effort And don't spike dopamine after engaging in effort.
296
Learn to spike your dopamine from effort itself.
297
Along the lines of how dopamine and dopamine schedules
298
and our perception of things can shape the way that we experience things as pleasureful or not.
299
There are beautiful studies, mainly looking at sugar appetite and our sense of pleasure from sweet things, but also for savory foods, et cetera.
300
And essentially the results that come out of this are the following.
301
If you ingest something that you like, it tastes good to you, but then you ingest something that's even sweeter or even more savory,
302
and then you go back to the food that you ate previously, well, you don't like it as much.
303
And that might seem like a duh, obviously, but that shift in perception can be blocked by blocking the shift in dopamine.
304
And so this really speaks to these peaks and valleys in dopamine
305
that I mentioned before
306
and how your experience of anything is going to depend on your prior experience of other things that evoke dopamine.
307
Big dopamine release makes it more challenging to experience more big dopamine release.
308
So dopamine is one of those things that you don't want too high or too low for too long.
309
It's all about staying in that dynamic range, and that's going to be different for everybody.
310
Now, there are circumstances in which increasing levels of dopamine is desirable and advantageous and clinically helpful.
311
Good example of this would be the drug Welbutrin, also called Bupyron, which increases dopamine and norepinephrine.
312
Welbutrin and Bupyron was developed as an alternative treatment for depression because some people who take the so-called SSRI,
313
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which as the name suggests, increase serotonin, suffer from serotonin-related side effects,
314
things like decreased appetite, decreased libido, or sometimes increased appetite, or other side effects that they don't want.
315
And Wellbutrin seems to avoid the sexual side effects.
316
It can blunt appetite and these sorts of things because of the increase in norepinephrine and dopamine
317
increases levels of motivation and craving, but also can create a state of elevated alertness
318
that can sometimes get in the way of healthy eating and things of that sort.
319
So one has to work with their clinician, as a psychiatrist, it is a prescription drug, in order to find the dosage of oil butrin that's correct for them.
320
And of course, there are a lot of people out there who are seeking
321
to increase their baseline levels of dopamine without taking any prescription pharmaceutical compounds.
322
Many people have turned to the use of L-tyrosine.
323
L-tyrosine is an amino acid precursor to L-DOPA, so it lies further up the dopamine synthesis pathway.
324
And nowadays, it's very common because L-tyrosine is sold over the counter in the United States,
325
that people will take L-tyrosine as a way to get more energized, alert, and focused.
326
L-tyrosine is typically taken in capsule form or powder form, anywhere from 500 to 750 to 1,000 milligrams.
327
And the timescale for increasing dopamine is about 30 to 45 minutes after ingestion, dopamine levels start to peak.
328
Of course, if you have a preexisting dopaminergic condition, So schizophrenia or psychosis of any kind,
329
bipolar, anxiety, and L-tyrosine will not be good for you.
330
And if you don't, you should just understand and expect that it's going to lead to an increase in dopamine.
331
You'll certainly feel an elevated state.
332
For some of you, that might be agitating.
333
For some of you, that might be really pleasurable.
334
And then you will feel a crash afterwards.
335
I do use L-tyrosine from time to time for enhancing focus and motivation, but I want to emphasize from time to time,
336
I've never been one to take L-tyrosine regularly in order to focus or train or do any kind of mental work.
337
I don't want to experience the drop in dopamine that inevitably occurs some period of time afterwards.
338
Now there is one compound that you are all familiar with and you've probably actually taken without realizing it that increases dopamine.
339
And that's something called PEA for phenyl ethylamine, technically beta phenyl ethylamine.
340
PEA is found in various foods, chocolate just happens to be one enriched in PEA and can increase synaptic levels of dopamine.
341
I personally take PEA from time to time as a focus and work aid in order to do intense bouts of work.
342
Again, I don't do that too often.
343
It's usually for mental work.
344
And I will take 500 milligrams of PEA and I'll take 300 milligrams of alpha GPC.
345
It leads to a sharp, but very transient increase in dopamine that lasts about 30 to 45 minutes.
346
And at least in my system, I found to be much more regulated and kind of even than something like L-tyrosine.
347
And so while it's fun to think about pharmacology
348
and underlying neural circuitry and cold water baths
349
and all these different things related to dopamine schedules and reward mechanisms
350
and attaching reward to effort and all the various things
351
that we've talked about today in terms of science and tools and protocols, I'd be remiss if I didn't include that social connections,
352
close social connections in particular, at least essential to stimulating the dopamine pathways.
353
So the take-home message there is quite simple.
354
Engage in, pursue quality, healthy social interactions.
355
I know I've covered a lot of material today.
356
I've really tried hard to focus on things that lie directly within the dopamine pathway and circuitries,
357
as well as things that directly stimulate those pathways and circuitries.
358
I realize in giving you a lot of information about science and mechanism, all the way from psychological and biological to circuitry and synaptic transmission,
359
volumetric transmission and so forth, that it might seem overwhelming.
360
The most important things to understand are that these dopamine pathways really are under your control.
361
And the locus of control resides in the fact
362
that your previous levels of dopamine are influencing your levels of dopamine right now.
363
And your current levels of dopamine
364
and where you take them next will influence your dopamine levels in the next days and weeks to come.
365
And last, but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.
📺 Same Channel
C11,315
Why Reading (Books) Makes Us Better at Speaking
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
Your Memories & Emotions Impact Immune Status
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C18
Build Muscle Size, Increase Strength & Improve Recovery | Huberman Lab Essentials
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C157
Why Women Over 30 Should Consider Freezing Their Eggs
University StudentsWorking Adults
B2Dr. Arthur Brooks: The 3 Macronutrients of True Happiness
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C14
How Foods & Nutrients Control Our Moods | Huberman Lab Essentials
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C15
Control Your Brain Chemistry for Focus, Motivation & Well-Being | Huberman Lab Essentials
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C13
The Science & Treatment of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) | Huberman Lab Essentials
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C129
The Cure for Addiction
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C134
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
The Science of Making & Breaking Habits | Huberman Lab Essentials
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
Food & Supplements for Brain Health & Cognitive Performance | Huberman Lab Essentials
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C13
Essentials: Science of Mindsets for Health & Performance | Dr. Alia Crum
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
Tools for Managing Stress & Anxiety | Huberman Lab Essentials
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
C11
Essentials: The Biology of Slowing & Reversing Aging | Dr. David Sinclair
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
Essentials: How to Assess & Improve All Aspects of Your Fitness | Dr. Andy Galpin
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C111
Essentials: Manage Stress & Build Resilience | Dr. Elissa Epel
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C119
Tools to Improve Your Focus & Concentration | Huberman Lab Essentials
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C14
Essentials: Micronutrients for Health & Longevity | Dr. Rhonda Patrick
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C116
You Can Learn New Habits Very Fast: Brain Circuits Rewire Faster With Urgency
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
✨ Recommend Video
C116
426 sentences
How to Increase Motivation & Drive | Huberman Lab Essentials
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
258 sentences
Once You Unlock The Third Eye, Reality Is Yours
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C15
36 sentences
Why successful people set habits, not just goals | Wendy Wood
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
108 sentences
Neuroscientist's Guide To 10X Your Focus & Memory | Dr Sahar Yousef | FO559 Raj Shamani
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
95 sentences
DOPAMINE NATION by Anna Lembke | Core Message
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
107 sentences
How to Quickly Improve Focus - Andrew Huberman
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
115 sentences
Neuroscientist: "DELETE Your Social Media NOW!" - Here's Why!
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
240 sentences
Rewire Your Brain By Doing Hard Things | Andrew Huberman Motivation
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C14
176 sentences
What Actually Drives Attraction (According to Psychology)
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
C13
292 sentences
The Power of Habit Audiobook | Book summary | Audiobook Labriry. #audiobook
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B26
63 sentences
Why You Can't Stay Consistent (The Psychology Behind It)
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
Why Dopamine Matters for Your Daily Drive
Imagine chatting with a friend who’s either bursting with energy to start a new project or struggling to find the motivation to get out of bed. The video explains that these differences often come down to dopamine, a key molecule that fuels motivation, focus, and even movement. Whether you’re aiming to boost your productivity or simply understand your own mood swings, learning about dopamine can help you take control of your daily habits.
Useful Chunks & Collocations
- Circulating in their system: Describes how dopamine moves through the body (e.g., "Low dopamine circulating in their system can lead to low energy.")
- Neural circuits: The brain’s communication pathways (e.g., "Dopamine activates neural circuits that drive motivation.")
- Volumetric release: A broad, widespread release of dopamine (e.g., "Volumetric release of dopamine can make you feel highly motivated.")
- Depletion of dopamine: A reduction in dopamine levels (e.g., "Depletion of dopamine in certain brain areas causes movement issues.")
- Universal currency: A shared biological "language" (e.g., "Dopamine is a universal currency for goal pursuit in mammals.")
Your Shadowing Challenge
Improve your English pronunciation and fluency with the shadowing technique. Here’s how: Watch a 1-minute clip of the video, then pause and repeat each sentence aloud immediately after the speaker, mimicking their tone, speed, and stress. Focus on phrases like "neural circuits" and "volumetric release" to master tricky collocations. For extra practice, use a shadowing app to record yourself and compare it to the original. This shadow speech exercise will help you sound more natural and build confidence in real conversations. Try it daily—consistency is key!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | you've interacted · I've talked · has also been shown |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are involved · is depleted · is released |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | somebody who just · dementia, which is · somebody who loves |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.