Bioinformatics Research Laboratory, IBI Biosolutions Pvt. Ltd. India

What is Dopamine?

Dopamine was discovered by Arvid Carlsson and Nils-Åke Hillarp at the Laboratory for Chemical Pharmacology of the National Heart Institute of Sweden, in 1952.

Dopamine is a hormone and neurotransmitter in the brain released by the hypothalamus occurring in a wide variety of animals, including both vertebrates and invertebrates. Chemically, it is a phenethylamine. and is produced in several areas of the brain, including the substantia nigra. Accordingly, dopaminergic neurons (i.e., neurons whose primary neurotransmitter is dopamine) are present chiefly in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the midbrain, substantia nigra pars compacta, and arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus.

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3D model of theDopamine structure

As Dopamine is a chemical naturally produced in the body, in the brain, dopamine functions as a neurotransmitter, activating dopamine receptors.  Its main function as a hormone is to inhibit the release of prolactin from the anterior lobe of the pituitary. Dopamine can be supplied as a medication that acts on the sympathetic nervous system, producing effects such as increased heart rate and blood pressure. However, since dopamine cannot cross the blood-brain barrier, dopamine given as a drug does not directly affect the central nervous system. To increase the amount of dopamine in the brains of patients with diseases such as Parkinson's disease and Dopa-Responsive Dystonia, a synthetic precursor to dopamine such as L-DOPA (levodopa) can be given, since this will cross the blood-brain barrier.

Dopamine has many functions in the brain, including important roles in behavior and cognition, motor activity, motivation and reward, regulation of milk production, sleep, mood, attention, and learning.. Dopamine affects the basal ganglia motor loop which in turn affects the way the brain controls our movements. Shortage of dopamine, particularly the death of dopamine neurons in the nigrostriatal pathway, causes Parkinson's disease, in which a person loses the ability to execute smooth, controlled movements.

Most importantly, dopamine is central to the reward system. Dopamine is commonly associated with the pleasure system of the brain, providing feelings of enjoyment and reinforcement to motivate a person proactively to perform certain activities. Dopamine is released by naturally rewarding experiences such as food, sex, use of certain drugs and neutral stimuli that become associated with them. This theory is often discussed in terms of drugs (such as cocaine and amphetamines), which seem to be directly or indirectly related to the increase of dopamine in these areas, and in relation to neurobiological theories of chemical addiction, arguing that these dopamine pathways are pathologically altered in addicted persons. However, cocaine and amphetamine influence separate mechanisms of action. Cocaine is a dopamine transporter blocker that competitively inhibits dopamine uptake to increase the lifetime of dopamine and augments an overabundance of dopamine (an increase of up to 150%) within the parameters of the dopamine neurotransmitters. Like cocaine, amphetamines increase the concentration of dopamine in the synaptic gap, but by a different mechanism. Amphetamines are similar in structure to dopamine, and so can enter the terminal button of the presynaptic neuron via its dopamine transporters as well as by diffusing through the neural membrane directly.

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