Essentials: Understanding & Treating Addiction | Dr. Anna Lembke

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. And now for my discussion with Dr. Anna Lemke. I and many listeners of this podcast. are obsessed with dopamine.

What is dopamine? And what are maybe some things about dopamine that most people don't know and probably that I don't know either. So dopamine is a neurotransmitter and neurotransmitters are those molecules that bridge the gap between two neurons. So they essentially allow one neuron, the presynaptic neuron, to communicate with the postsynaptic neuron.

Dopamine is intimately associated with the experience of reward, but also with movement, which I think is really interesting because movement and reward are linked, right? If you think about, you know, early humans, it you had to move in order to go seek out the water or the, the meat or whatever it was. So dopamine is this really um powerful, important molecule in the brain that helps us experience pleasure. It's not the only neurotransmitter involved in pleasure, but it's a really, really important one.

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