Dopamine, your true key to happiness.
This wonderful organic molecule is one of the major neurotransmitters in your brain responsible for happiness and movement. It is responsible for feelings of pleasure, desire and motivation.
It can be found throughout the body in small amounts but in significantly larger amounts in the basal ganglia, olfactory tubercle, and nucleus of the amygdala of the brain.
Clinical Use
Dopamine is used widely as a treatment for hypotension in adults and to treat shock and cardiac failure in ill, newborn infants. This works because dopamine directly dilates the mesentric, renal, and cerebral vessels in your body and redirects blood to the essential viscera(organs). It is usually the first choice in treatment because it does not cause other damages while treating like other drugs do.
It is also a very popular treatment for Parkinson's Disease. While not exactly ingesting pure dopamine to aid in the treatment, dopamine agonist drugs are used to increase dopamine production in the brain, in turn,slowing the destruction of the brain's fragile cells.
Origin/Discovery
There isn't much I can say about the origin of dopamine because it is as old as the human race, itself. It was discovered in 1957 by a Swedish pharmacologist named Arvid Carlsson. He proved that dopamine was a very important neurotransmitter in the brain and not just the unimportant precursor to norepinephrine that many other pharmacologists theorized.
He also developed the Dopamine Theory of Schizopherenia, which suggested that an overproduction of dopamine in the brain is the main cause of the disease.His theory was correct, because inhibition of central dopamine production is the basis of most antipsychotic drugs used today.
Fun Facts
Molecular Formula:C8H11NO2
Molecular weight: 153.178
It is combustible.
References
- http://www.dopadoc.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/dopamine.jpeg
- http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/rest/chemical/dopamine#itabs-2d
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001762/
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1563
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2824994/
- http://www.med.lu.se/wnc/the_discovery_of_dopamine
Very informative! I did not know that dopamine is used widely as a treatment for hypotension in adults and to treat shock and cardiac failure in ill, newborn infants. This is a very cool fact. Good job!
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