Have you ever wondered how the 100 or so different neurotransmitters that are whizzing around in your brain right now make you feel, think and behave? How do they interact with each other and what happens when you have too much or too little of any of them?
Dopamine is one of the most important neurotransmitters when it comes to understanding mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression and other mood states. It is produced in several areas of the brain and affects the way messages are relayed from a nerve cell to a target cell (often another nerve cell). The neurotransmitter is released from the sending nerve into a small space called the synapse, and then collected by the target cell at receptors. Dopamine is also a neurohormone — it acts on large sections of the brain as well as individual synapses.
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