Dopamine

**Dopamine** 

**20 things you don't know about me:**

1. Where I hang out most of the time: **The Nervous System, more specifically in the brain and neurons, or nerve cells.**

2. I am responsible for: **Transmitting signals between nerve cells in the brain. I affect brain processes that control the ability to experience pain and pleasure, movement, and emotional response.**

3. I'm most similar to the drug: **I am most similar to Epinephrine and Norepinephrine.**

4. My favorite activity is: **Jogging from the Ventral Tegmental Area to the Frontal Cortex when I am too excited to contain myself. Also, hanging out in my receptor cite.**

5. I hate it when: **Humans do not eat or sleep because I shrink in size and I lose energy.**

6. The best thing about receptor sites is: **They are the most comfortable place to chill, it is like I was made for them. I am your typical couch potato.**

7. When humans don't have enough of me: **Their concentration is lowered, they have issues with balance, walk strangely, motor control is tough, tremors in the body, stiff muscles and/or muscle pain, and learning is affected.**

8. In a choice between robots or zombies: **Neither because robots do not need sleep or food and they do not have organs, and zombies are missing parts of their brains so it lessens my chances of survival.**

9. The sucky thing about being a hormone: **I make humans addicted to things that bring them pleasure such as drugs like cocaine and fatty foods like pizza.**

10. A really strange fact about me: **Some say that i affect symptoms of someone with Schizophrenia and** ** Parkinson's  Disease. Too much of me is associated with Schizophrenia and too little of me is associated with depression or Parkinson's Disease. **

11. My favorite food and why: **Lima beans and bananas because they make me stronger (increase dopamine levels).**

<span style="color: #26267e; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">12. I once dated a synapse, but it fell apart because: **It had a dopamine receptor antagonist, and I fell in love with another synapse that allowed me to function more properly.**

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> 1 3. Sleep is awesome because: **It balances levels of Dopamine in the human brain. With lack of sleep, I decrease in amount because I make humans feel better when they get sleep. Without sleep, levels of me decrease and people feel worse.**

<span style="color: #26267e; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">14. A neuron walks into a bar and says: **"Can I get a curacao punch cocktail?" Because it has alcohol in it and makes me happy/excited.**

<span style="color: #26267e; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">15. When humans have too much of me: **They either have increased aggression, take dangerous risks, or have distorted perceptions of reality.**

<span style="color: #26267e; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">16. My best friend is: **Acetylcholine because we have both lived in the Nervous System all our lives and known each other ever since our humans were born.**

<span style="color: #26267e; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">17. Family: **I am a member of the Catecholamine family. My baby sister is a Catechol, my mother is a Tyrosine, and my father is a Dopa.**

<span style="color: #26267e; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">18. Molecular formula: **C8H11NO2**

<span style="color: #26267e; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">19. Favorite Quote: **"High off of love, drunk from my hate."**

<span style="color: #26267e; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">20. Movies: **The Soloist (schizophrenia), On the Edge (depression), Dopamine (dopamine)**

<span style="color: #f59f8a; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 21px; line-height: 31px;">**Status Updates:**

<span style="color: #800000; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">//**- The human I live in got very little sleep today. They may seem like they still have energy, but I am VERY tired.**//

<span style="color: #800000; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">//**- Today my receptor site and I got into an argument because the human I live in did not eat breakfast!**//

<span style="color: #800000; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">//**- Just ran from the Ventral Tegmental Area all the way to Frontal Cortex because that is what chocolate makes me do.**//

<span style="color: #800000; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">//**- Hanging out with Acetylcholine in the Nervous System! Gonna' go meet up with some synapses and chill in our receptor sites. :)**//

<span style="color: #800000; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">//**- My real name is 3,4-dihydroxyphenethylamine .. try saying that 5 times fast.**//

<span style="color: #f96695; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 160%;">**Photos:**




 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">This is me (my molecular structure). I am consisted of 8 carbons, 11 hydrogens, a nitrogen, and 2 oxygens (C8H11NO2). My chemical name is 4-(2-aminoethyl)benzene-1,2-diol. **

http://clinicallypsyched.com/cp-images/Dopamine_chemical_structure.png




 * <span style="color: #14ad14; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">This is where I live, in the VTA (Ventral Tegmental Area) of the human brain. Sometimes my family and I move, but we still live in the same general area. We are located on nerve cells. **

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<span style="color: #8282f2; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">**This is a picture of my family tree. My mother Tyrosine and my father Dopa had me, Dopamine, and I will one day have a child, Norepinephrine.**

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<span style="color: #e788d6; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">**When I get excited and need to release some energy, I go running/jogging down some of these paths in the blue. This usually happens when humans get sleep, eat good food, do drugs, etc.**

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<span style="color: #068e6a; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">**Say hello to my receptor sites. When I am released from a synapse, I attach to a Dopamine Receptor site in order to send messages.**

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<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 110%;">**Websites:** http://allpsych.com/psychology101/neurotransmitters.html http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/dopamine.aspx http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mouse-man/200904/what-is-dopamine http://www.drketi.com/lowSerotonDopamine.html http://evenstaronline.com/articles/top10dopamine.html http://www.ehow.com/about_5394308_low-dopamine-symptoms.html http://www.integrativepsychiatry.net/dopamine.html http://www.bio.davidson.edu/Courses/Molbio/MolStudents/spring2003/Siegenthaler/Dopaminesite.htm http://www.livestrong.com/article/297447-the-effects-of-dopamine-deficiency/ <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 110%;">**Dopamine Image:** http://www.3dchem.com/imagesofmolecules/Dopamine.jpg