In another life I was a research assistant in a lab studying drug addiction, and our operating assumption was that - like any other system in the brain - it's not as simple as saying "neurotransmitter X causes Y". But there does seem to be an awful lot of evidence (or at least there was a lot of evidence cerca 2008-2009) to suggest that dopamine is heavily involved in motivation and habit formation, which are easily linked to addiction.
I suppose more succinctly, claiming that dopamine causes addiction is like claiming that the cam shaft is what makes a car go. Addiction is a phenomena that involves what appears to be a lot of factors and components; dopamine appears to be one of them. I think this is the misapprehension the article is trying to rectify, but I am not sure that the way the article pursues the case it makes really simplifies things.<p>In biological, let alone neurological systems, the notion of cause is far less discrete than it is in a reductive area such as basic physics. Many of the long term effects in these kinds of systems arise in circumstances where there are clearly feedback loops and many of them overlapping. One component may be involved in the dynamics of addiction, regulating motor functions, and learning, and each of these phenomena involve many components. The neurotrash that pushes the message that dopamine is somehow the causal component in the process of addiction appeals to the reductive interest in seeing every effect as the consequence of a straightforward cause.<p>This kind of thinking in public perception also might be the consequence of the pharma industry pushing a narrative of "chemical imbalances" being at the root of behavioral and psychological problems, discharging from this picture factors on many other levels such as past experiences, mental associations, social and familial conditions, economic circumstances, etc... all of which can contribute to addiction as a phenomena.
The author tries to argue that dopamine is not addictive by talking about how the absence of dopamine can affect critical bodily functions but never sufficiently disproves the well researched claim that dopamine when given in artificially large amounts, which is crucial point when talking about dopamine addiction, is indeed addictive. At best the author is making a technical distinction that for the most part is inconsequential.
It's really important for everyone to understand the point of the middle of this article which can be summarized as: "dopamine is not a reward, it is the expectation of a reward".<p>However, this doesn't mean that one cannot be addicted to dopamine. Lab rats will submit themselves to physical harm to get more dopamine and humans given a dopamine button keep pressing it for more. This is explained in the book "The Willpower Instinct".<p>It's probably the case though that you would only see a psychologist like the author of this article for an addiction to a true reward chemical (like opioids). A dopamine addiction is more likely to be something like checking your phone for messages every few minutes.<p>The usefulness of dopamine is to provide motivation. So unfortunately the solution to a perceived dopamine problem isn't to broadly have less dopamine (then you won't want to get off the couch), but to somehow have less associated with the activity you don't want to do and more associated with the activity you do want to do.
> mentioning neuroscience is a great way to convince people you are more knowledgeable about something, and to make your arguments more convincing. This effect was recently demonstrated by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, who showed that use of irrelevant references to brain science was an effective way to lure people into thinking that complex phenomena are simple,<p>Choice quote IMO.
Ultimately, much of this argument feels pedantic. Yes, people are giving oversimplified descriptions of what's going on when they say dopamine is "addictive." That's because it's easier to describe than incentive salience - but ultimately, the end result is what they care about. It's the behavioral conditioning that people are upset about, which is experimentally proven to be both effective and intentionally leveraged by many industries with great "success."<p>I do agree with his statement that we need to talk more about the complex reasons for that behavior on top of behavioral conditioning, and that people caught in those cycles can and should leverage the means that we have at our disposal to undo that conditioning when it is harmful to them (with professional help as needed). But I think it is absolutely valid to talk about how behavioral conditioning is intentionally leveraged in the design of many products we use, in casinos, etc. And that it is <i>not</i> something that people can or do consciously notice.<p>Before people can help themselves, they need to even realize there is a problem in the first place, and that is one of the dangerous things about behavioral conditioning. Conditioning is the very mechanism by which we learn new behaviors that become integrated into our life: and as such, it is very easy for a person to fall prey to operant conditioning and for it to just feel like "life as normal," even when the patterns in your life have actually changed dramatically.<p>In particular, I think it's important for us to be aware of behavioral conditioning <i>as</i> an intentional design choice of the products we use and the entertainment we engage in. The more we are consciously aware of it, the more we can develop the sort of meta-cognition that allows us to notice when we fall into patterns of conditioning that are harming us more than helping us. (note that you can also be conditioned to engage in behaviors that are helpful too! So being aware of <i>what</i> you are conditioning yourself for is as important as whether/when you are being conditioned)
This popularization of neuroscience dumbed down to the point of losing the grain of truth is really upsetting.<p>90 billion neurons in our brain, interconnected in some combinatorial number of ways, but all our behavior and inner world boils down to the interaction of a few dozen neurotransmitters. Yup, sounds about right.
Nearly all popular science journalism is either vastly oversimplified or outright trash. If you want the real story you have to study the actual science, which means reading papers or at least reading articles like this one written by actual practicing scientists or other professionals (doctors, engineers) very familiar with the science. Even then you should cross-reference and gather multiple opinions from the field.<p>Same goes for pop understandings of science. My favorite is "survival of the fittest" for Darwinian evolutionary theory, which is basically wrong as it's vastly oversimplified and prone to enormous misunderstandings. A more accurate and modern version would be "differential rates of reproduction of patterns of genetic information that influence the formation of phenotypes in proportion to those phenotypes' performance of said reproduction." Not as catchy, and much harder to use to rationalize popular cultural and political fads.