For decades, scientists have understood that when a person perceives something as pleasurable, dopamine is released in their brain. Hear a favorite song come on the radio? Dopamine time. See the ...

Dopamine is one of the most extensively studied chemical messengers in the human brain, and yet scientists are still figuring out how it works to accomplish so much. For years, the classic view has ...

Science writer Michaeleen Doucleff was sitting on a beautiful beach with her daughter, who was building a sandcastle. With a perfect blue sky overhead, and waves rolling onto shore, Doucleff should ...

When it comes to dopamine, we act like kids in a candy store. But instead of overindulging, experts suggest looking for ...

You know that little jolt of happiness you get when you finally finish a big project or simply check off a task on your to-do list? That feeling comes from dopamine, a neurotransmitter that acts like ...

People are a mystery. Sometimes I'm convinced we're all just a bunch of intricate puzzles who happen to be wearing pants. To have a decent shot at comprehending human behavior, we need to better ...

If you’ve heard of two of the brain’s chemical neurotransmitters, it’s probably dopamine and serotonin. Never mind that glutamate and GABA do most of the work — it’s the thrill of dopamine as the ...

Dopamine neurons—the cells that drive reward and motivation while we're awake—become surprisingly active during nonrapid eye movement sleep right after we learn something new. The findings challenge ...

Dopamine in the brain influences movement, learning, motivation and sleep. In humans, problems with dopamine are linked to conditions like Parkinson’s disease, depression and sleep disorders. While ...

We love a good TikTok trend. Last week we were all about being very demure, very mindful; the week before that we went cucumber crazy, and now the latest trend to take over our FYPs is a surprisingly ...

This post was written by Kübra Fethiye Karataş, MSc, with edits from Jo Cutler, Ph.D. Many of the ways we help require effort Source: Blue Bird / Pexels At the heart of motivation is a simple question ...