As we know, dopamine is involved in many different aspects of our lives, including sleep, memory, mood, learning, and movement. Dopamine is also a significant component of the brain’s reward system and, as such, it’s the source of motivation. That’s why it’s so important in regard to behavior and behavior change.
There are four major dopamine pathways in the brain. The two that matter most to us here are the mesolimbic pathway and the mesocortical pathway. While both pathways motivate us, they motivate us in different ways and in different directions, indicated by the nicknames given to them: desire dopamine and control dopamine.
While dopamine is distributed throughout everyone’s brain, the amount and pattern of distribution is not the same for everyone. As a result, some of us have more dopamine in the control pathway and some of us have more dopamine in the desire pathway. And of course not everyone who has more dopamine in the control pathway has the same amount, which is also the case for dopamine in the desire pathway. Still others may have similar amounts of dopamine in both pathways.
Here’s a comparison of what a predominance of dopamine in one pathway compared to the other pathway looks like:
Desire dopamine generates craving for things, substances, people, situations—whatever is salient (important) to you. You desire (want) what you like and what matters to you.
Control dopamine generates a craving for achievement or accomplishment, which can range from completing multiple years of education in order to attain a degree or checking off boxes on a to-do list.
Having more desire dopamine doesn’t automatically cause you to have unrestrained appetites or develop addictions. And having more control dopamine doesn’t automatically cause you to make better judgements or be a better critical thinker.
Our genetics play a role in our neurochemistry, including dopamine distribution, as does our experience. We all have dopamine in both pathways. One of the things about neurochemicals is that while they affect us, we can also affect them. So if we have lots of dopamine in the desire pathway but not enough in the control pathway to actually get what we want, we can use contrivances to take actions that alter our neurochemistry. Likewise, if we have lots of dopamine in the control pathway but not enough in the desire pathway to identify what we really want, we can use contrivances to help us increase desire dopamine.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
—Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
As with the Meta Mindsets, in which Production mindset is most effective in the service of Experiment mindset, control dopamine is most effective in the service of desire dopamine. Otherwise the functions and processes of the mesocortical pathway have to operate without salience, meaning without your direction. You have nothing to process but the exteroceptive or interoceptive situations or stimuli you happen to encounter and no context within which to process it.
One of my favorite quotes from neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett is: You tweak the world, and the world tweaks you back. With too much control dopamine and not enough desire dopamine, it’s more like: The world tweaks you, and you attempt to manage the effects.
We happen to live in a world where control dopamine is held up as the gold standard, whether it’s labeled as such or not. People are very busy pursuing completion for its own sake without having determined whether or not there is anything meaningful to them in the pursuit. This has negative implications for individuals, societies, and the world. In The Molecule of More, Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD and Michael E. Long write:
Some people have so much control dopamine that they become addicted to achievement but are unable to experience H&N [Here and Now] fulfillment. They achieve something, then move on to the next thing.
Next time, we’ll take a closer look at the relationship between dopamine, the wanting neurochemical, and the liking (aka Here and Now) neurochemicals.
*Hat tip to Pete Seeger
This post is part of a series on neurotransmitters that both affect our behavior and are affected by our behavior.