Decode the reckless habit

Dopamine makes us feel satisfied after eating a delicious meal, happy when the national team won, and also made us feel excited to perform risky acts such as high-speed vehicle launch.

Adventurous behavior always treats every logical reasoning. We can't explain why some people like to do unpredictable things - like jumping off planes or putting a fortune in betting - even knowing they can lose everything. A team of Vanderbilt University experts and Albert Einstein Medical University (USA) claim that a chemical that makes people want to risk their lives is dopamine - a neurotransmitter that makes sense of excitement in the brain.

Dopamine makes us feel satisfied after eating a delicious dish, happy when the national team won, sublimated when using drugs. It also makes us feel excited when parachuting from airplanes, spending money on bluff or launching cars with high speed. According to researchers, the brains of people who prefer doses have more dopamine than most of us. That situation makes them tend to be 'addicted' to risky behavior.

Dopamine makes us feel excited when parachuting out of the plane . Photo: Time.

David Zald, a psychology professor at Vanderbilt University, conducts experiments to understand brain differences between adventurers and ordinary people. He asked 34 men and women a questionnaire to evaluate their new sense of finding.

David then performed their brain scans with postitron radiation to calculate the amount of dopamine receptors in the brain of each volunteer (receptor is the molecular structure on the inner surface or outer surface of the cell. It is responsible for binding cells to hormones, antigens, neurotransmitters, drugs and many other chemicals. David discovered a receptor capable of regulating dopamine levels.

Previous studies have shown that when dopamine is added to the brain, rats always take risky behaviors in their new environment. David wants to find out if the same thing happens to people. After analyzing the results of the brain scan, David found, people also tend to be more reckless when their brain dopamine levels are higher than average. Individuals who prefer doses with fewer receptors regulate dopamine than the cautious ones.

This finding reinforces David's hypothesis, in which adventurous brains always release large amounts of dopamine every time they experience new sensations because they have too few dopamine regulators. The 'dopamine' rush makes them feel so excited that they will continue to repeat the risky behavior many times later.

'This is an interesting finding. It helps scientists understand why we like new things, why we are addicted to drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes. Dopamine is behind all those behaviors, ' said Dr. Bruce Cohen, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical University.

Bruce argues that if a better understanding of new sensory behavior is found, scientists can find more effective treatments for addiction. If future studies prove that addicts with less than the average dopamine receptor moderation, they can produce drugs that function similarly to those receptors. These medications will help bring the dopamine concentration in the addict's brain back to normal levels, thereby reducing the level of addiction.

Theoretically, David's discovery could end an issue of controversy among neuroscientists. Some people believe that we are addicted to alcohol, drugs due to lack of congenital dopamine. But many others claim that the addict's brain produces enough dopamine but cannot destroy it, so the continual increase in dopamine levels causes the victim to enjoy risky behavior.