Learning and the Brain: Controlling Dopamine

Recently I had a bizzarro dream that the protective railings, four levels above the foyer in the Fowler Learning Center, were removed. Students and faculty seemed unconcerned about falling to certain peril. In fact, they were delighted by the new challenge. I was freaking out. From high above the stone floor on the ground level four stories below, I saw a former administrator I had worked with decades ago. I yelled, “Hey, this isn’t safe. We need to put up some yellow caution tape.” I knew he heard me. But he was orating a long monologue about how to generate dopaminergic reactions in our students. He pretended he didn’t hear me.

Now, I am no dream analyst, but I think I get this one. We all want to feel motivated, but there need to be guardrails and boundaries on our pursuit of the adrenaline surge of feel-good chemicals. The dopamine surge is well studied: chocolate can lift our dopamine levels over baseline by 1.5x (but the effect lasts only seconds), nicotine elevates our levels by 2.5x (again, short-lived), and illegal chemicals can elevate by a factor of 10. These data highlight the need to regulate our lust for the dopamine surge. How do we encourage healthy, positive quests for the feel-good chemicals in our teenagers?

Lesson #14 - Controlling Dopamine

This blog is a follow-up to two previous entries about High Effort Success. What is it in our brains that enables high effort when the task is extremely difficult? The too-simple answer is that when our brains generate adrenaline/dopamine responses, the high effort feels really good to us. But generation of feel-good chemicals is a double-edged proposition that frequently challenges teenage decision making capacities.

Definition: Dopamine is a neuromodulator that coordinates motivation and drive. It is the active chemical in our brain’s reward and pleasure systems. Dopamine plays a large role in memory, mood, sleep, learning, concentration, and movement.

Exercise can double our dopamine levels over baseline among those who enjoy it. Therein lies a critical distinction. Because the initiation of dopaminergic action deeper in our brain triggers activation of our prefrontal cortex (a thinking, rational center of the human brain) via the mesolimbic pathway, the level of reward is profoundly affected by our desire to engage in the task. That is, exercise among the reluctant generates a lower dopamine response. The thrill of learning can also generate wonderful chemical reactions in our brains, especially when we enjoy the challenge.

Here is the response from Yousef (Dillo) '25, a dedicated student of neuroscience, to the challenge implicit in the paradox of the human need for feel-goods.

A Happy Medium - Yousef '25

The baseline is that, as humans, we want to feel good; in some ways, we need to feel good. Usually, when we mention dopamine, it tends to be associated with some sort of illicit drug or that nasty addiction we all have to our phones. Of course, those are the classic examples of chasing a dopaminergic rush, altering how our synapses work because of the sheer dump of dopamine. However, it’s not often that we point out the incredible nature of dopamine in healthy pursuits like learning, which is necessary for life.

In learning, dopamine plays a wildly underappreciated role in motivation, our desire that fuels the ability to engage and confront challenges. When we explore and pour effort into a journey that gives us little rewards along the way, a progression towards a particular goal, the brain’s reward pathway becomes engaged and releases dopamine in smaller amounts that allow retention of focus. This keeps us wanting to engage in worthwhile work, in other words, when we feel like we are getting something out of it. 

The paradox of the human need for feel-good highlights a boundary of the worthwhile endeavors dopamine supports. Although its association with unnatural pleasure may overshadow its crucial role in healthier pursuits, as those interested in neuroscience and, more specifically, learning, we must understand how dopamine fosters and facilitates the phenomenon. A happy medium between the temptation of immediate pleasure and embracing a learning journey (that progression from earlier) harnesses the incredible feat of the brain’s reward system.

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