Chronic adversity dampens dopamine production

https://elifesciences.org/for-the-press/49f3ac1d/chronic-adversity-dampens-dopamine-production

by AdrienLemaire • 7 years ago

201 67 7 years ago

zzzeek• 7 years ago

all I am hearing about this week is dopamine. We did brain scan A on population B (kids on screens, alcoholics, schizophrenics, ADHDs, you name it) and saw their DOPAMINE WENT TO C!! It just seems quite odd that we can reduce the well-being of the human spirit to just one single neurotransmitter. This week I'm feeling like "we did an fMRI / PET scan on population X" is like the new phrenology since I don't get the impression the structure of the brain is so well understood that these scans point to some irrefutable facts about the subjects being scanned.

BayesStreet• 7 years ago

Absolutely, not only a single neurotransmitter but can have completely different effects in different regions of the brain and most articles are extremely reductive.

This study in particular though is very well done, just publishing striatal dopamine and hopefully we'll see more studies like this in the future to piece it together.

xrd3• 7 years ago

It's always interesting when things are upvoted to the front page but no comments. It makes to you think that this kind of article is resonating with people who are fearful of commenting because the conclusions would contradict a really powerful dogma in the community.

kiba• 7 years ago

It's not a good idea to make leap of logic regarding what a particular community may feel.

ajkjk• 7 years ago

I can't think of any dogma this would conflict with. Why do you think that?

bleuedejapan• 7 years ago

I upvoted it because I found it interesting, and didn't comment because I really have nothing to say on the matter.

Which dogma are you discussing?

hanoz• 7 years ago

More like a lot of people find it interesting, feel completely unqualified to comment themselves, but are interested to see what Hacker News' resident experts in the subject have to say on the matter when they appear, as they unnervingly always seem to do.

xrd3• 7 years ago

There is a dogma in this community that is: success is all about perseverance and winning against adversity, independent of life circumstances. This article indicates that certain people will be, based on birthright, able to do that more effectively.

The other dogma, evident from the down votes and comments, is that there is no dogma in this community.

asimpletune• 7 years ago

What if we just took birthright even further, by just replacing it with fate, assuming for the moment that everything is pre-decided?

I think that’s probably plausible, but it’s sort of besides the point because I there is no reason to believe that we can ever know this fate until it’s happened. Granted, in some contexts we are allowed to know this “fate”, and this context can just be replaced with “science”, or “the predictable things we know about our world”.

So bearing this all this in mind, if we took your idea even further - all the way to full on pre-destiny - I don’t see how it should change anything about our current world.

Basically, you might be right that there’s some kind of great master race sleeping amongst the rest of us, but it’s not really something that you get to “know”. Probably this dogma you speak of that people hold on to is because it’s just as plausible to believe in hard work as fate and no one really knows what to do, or else we’d all do it.

I’d add that even assuming that we can quantify birthrite to begin with, not to mention success, is basically starting from a false predicate. The world is manifold, shit happens, and any attempt to try and turn this stuff into inputs and outputs isn’t intellectually honest.

braythwayt• 7 years ago

No, it makes YOU think this, because you have some fairly evident set of biases around dogma in the community.

I find THAT more interesting than why an article could get upvotes but the discussion might be delayed.

We all have biases. For example, when I read people who talk a lot about being fearful of contradicting community dogma, I tend to anticipate that they will be... Men who lean towards conspiracy theories involving women, minorities, and "the left" being in control of society and forming "witch hunts" and "mob justice," not to mention "cancelling people for wrongthink."

Of course, that has absolutely no bearing on who you may be and what you may believe. Recognizing my biases is the first step towards banishing them.

xrd3• 7 years ago

I'm getting known as having biases, that's important to think about (that's what I interpret what you are saying). I'm a fan of your writing on Twitter and will definitely consider all you said here. For the record, I think my biases lean the exact opposite of what you say you would assume they are.

0db532a0• 7 years ago

“De-platforming” and “safe spaces” exist and have been wielded against people who go against existing dogmas and codes of conduct. It is right to be worried about such things. Look at what happened to RMS. He even has a whole section on what gender pronouns to use on his personal webpage. Linus also came into disrepute. I wouldn’t call these men examples of the proverbial 4chan-frequenting incel as you seem to be implying.

PragmaticPulp2• 7 years ago

Interesting finding, but the headline doesn’t quite match the study. They didn’t find that chronic adversity dampens dopamine production in general, nor did they find that the stressed individuals had less dopamine than their unstressed peers per se. They only discovered that dopamine production differed between the two groups in response to a specific stressful task.

In other words, the chronically stressed individuals had a different response to stress, which involved less dopamine production than that of their less stressed peers. It’s not clear how much of this is actually a negative adaption, as opposed to just being a different way of responding.

It’s also important to consider the context provided by the researchers in the article:

  “This study can’t prove that chronic psychosocial stress
  causes mental illness or substance abuse later in life by
  lowering dopamine levels,” Dr Bloomfield cautions. “But we
  have provided a plausible mechanism for how chronic stress
  may increase the risk of mental illnesses by altering the
  brain’s dopamine system.”

With studies like this, it’s important to avoid the knee-jerk reaction that you might need “more dopamine”. More is not always better, and we have decades of research demonstrating that dopaminergic drugs are not great antidepressants. When considering your own treatment programs, it’s important to focus on evidence-based medicine and proven, sustainable treatments and therapies.

c3534l• 7 years ago

Measuring dopamine is a bit like measuring a person's heart rate. It could indicate fear, or it could indicate sexual arousal, too much coffee, or some other medical condition. People like to say things like "seratonin is the drug that makes you happy," or "oxytocin is the drug that makes you feel love," or "dopamine is the brain's reward mechanism," but those statements are simplified to the point of being wrong.

This study is still pretty cool though, because it does point us in a general direction. It can help explain why some mental illnesses like schizophrenia have strong genetic components, yet also environmental factors like childhood abuse. As you said, the reduced dopamine could be a good thing. But maybe in a genetic minority it creates a neuro-chemical downward spiral. Maybe we could prevent the development of schizophrenia by prescribing medication following trauma. Who knows. It opens a lot of doors.

ianai2• 7 years ago

Meds and, you know, talking to them for longer, more often, at earlier stages.

duahncjak• 7 years ago

Another interpretation of this data would be that causality runs in the other direction. You can also make up a plausible-sounding story for the mechanism - a dopamine response to stressful situations helps people solve their problems.

jotakami• 7 years ago

This is what I was thinking, since there is probably a strong genetic component to an individual’s dopamine production and response profile. As someone who lived most of my life with undiagnosed ADHD and just recently started taking stimulants for treatment, I can attest that normal life issues which once seemed like arduous mountains to climb are now summarily dispatched before lunchtime when I have a dopamine boost. It’s shocking how effective the medication is, side effects notwithstanding.

pitaj• 7 years ago

Please don't quote with code blocks. Requoted:

“This study can’t prove that chronic psychosocial stress causes mental illness or substance abuse later in life by lowering dopamine levels,” Dr Bloomfield cautions. “But we have provided a plausible mechanism for how chronic stress may increase the risk of mental illnesses by altering the brain’s dopamine system.”

afpx• 7 years ago

FYI dopamine works well for treating bipolar depression. A google scholar search for “bipolar depression” and amphetamine will show references.

choppaface• 7 years ago

It would be interesting if they had studied norepinephrine and seretonin levels too. Could it be that the group with chronic adversity simply were less aroused overall with the stress of the arithmetic challenges? Also, did task performance differ between the two groups? Agree that the connection between adversity and dopamine production isn't so clear in this paper.

_0ffh• 7 years ago

Sounds like a habituation result, nothing surprising, but still possibly significant.

Angostura• 7 years ago

I think the headline's fine actually. It doesn't say there is any general reduction, rather that there is a 'dampening'. That rather implies a change in response to a stimulus .

Apocryphon• 7 years ago

On the subject of dopamine, we’ve all heard new colloquialisms that speak of dopamine hits from webpages updating, notifications of likes. But has anyone done research into it? To formulate some sort of biochemical model of internet addiction?

airstrike• 7 years ago

I'd also love to know more.

And upvoted so you can get that sweet dopamine hit.

PragmaticPulp2• 7 years ago

The colloquial use of “dopamine” is more metaphorical than scientific. Your brain and body use dopamine in many different pathways for many different reasons. For example, the tremors in Parkinson’s disease are related to the degradation of certain movement-related dopaminergic pathways in your brain.

When most people self-diagnose as “low dopamine” or refer to addictive behaviors as a “dopamine hit”, they’re not exactly referring to hard science. Yes, dopamine is involved in motivational reward and anticipatory behavior and dopamine is also key to the rewarding aspects of certain drugs, but the reward system is much more complicated than a single chemical messenger. For example, the opioid system plays an important role in reward as well.

In terms of treating addiction disorders, understanding the fine details of neurotransmitters and reward pathways in the brain isn’t as relevant to therapy as you might hope. The high level concepts and therapeutic methods for changing people’s behavior don’t really depend on understanding how dopamine or serotonin operate in the brain.

For example, with internet addiction it’s important to enable people to understand why they are spending so much time on the internet. You need to give them the tools to recognize their behavior, perform some introspection, and intentionally take action to make different choices about how they spend their time. Relating this back to dopamine or reward systems is only really useful as a tool to make these mental models stick with the patients. If they feel a sense of understanding, they’re more likely to feel a sense of control over their actions, and in turn more likely to take action to change that behavior.

perl4ever2• 7 years ago

If you're trying to debug a computer system, you won't get very far by trying to adjust the voltage of the circuitry, whether you do it overall or try to tune specific areas. Imagining there needs to be "more ones" or "more zeros" is pretty simplistic.

On the other hand, talking to it is not likely to help either, although you may work out some of your own issues.

refurb• 7 years ago

Agree completely.

We already know what happens when you don’t have enough dopamine (Parkinson’s disease - dopamine analogues are used to treat it) and too much dopamine (schizophrenia - dopamine blockers are used to treat it). Saying more is better is a major over simplification.

Dopamine is involved in a number of different neural structures that all have different effects. Not to mention there are several dopamine receptors subtypes that all have different actions.

friendlybus• 7 years ago

An academic studying motivation in humans and video game design collated 70 or so papers on motivation in humans trying to figure out what it was that motivated people, and apply that to video games. He found that nobody really knows, they all just describe the outcome as feedback or reward without any qualitative description. This is in his talk he did on youtube somewhere.

I don't think you can build a biochemical model of internet addiction as it differs on what the content you are addicted to is. Some people can frequently check up on new recipes or different news forums and others don't at all. It can differ per topic per person. Instagram does nothing for me but means a lot to some women.

Dopamine was used in the past few years to support various reasoning around behaviour and in turn justify stories about behaviour. It was closer to spiritual than scientific.

hirundo• 7 years ago

The College Board recently added an "adversity score" to the SAT that "will reportedly reflect students' family income, environment and educational differences" and hence help level the playing field. Maybe all of that could be replaced by a measure of dopamine production. Rather than measuring external correlates of adversity it could be an objective measure of the actual internal experience.

I wonder how people would game that in order to increase their chances of admission.

The concept of intersectionality seems to be an attempt to measure chronic adversity using oppressed identities as a proxy. It could theoretically be replaced by a more direct, objective measure like this.

cwkoss• 7 years ago

"Jimmy's doing 3 months of self-flagellation to prepare for the SATs!"

brodouevencode4• 7 years ago

I am not a fan of the adversity score. There are a lot of things kids go through that don't make it down on paper: abuse/bullying, non-parental involvement or incompetent parents, living barely out of poverty, etc. You don't have to be a lesbian African American living in the projects to have a shit life.

ben_jones• 7 years ago

People also underestimate how easy it is to cheat. One of the richest people I met in College was also on full financial aid and received in-state tuition despite being from out-of-state. All he had to do was lie on a couple forms. He was also on foodstamps so that he could spend more of his monthly stipend on drugs and alchohol.

There will always be bad actors in any system, and its still worth having aid programs even though a few people take advantage of them, but there needs to be serious checks and balances first.

TLDR; college organizations can't be trusted to audit themselves so we need a combination of government regulation with teeth, consumer advocacy, and full transparency, in order to achieve the best outcome of an initiative such as an adversity score.

bsanr23• 7 years ago

Would it surprise you to know that, looking back at my own life, my being a gay black male had a lot to do with being subject to the things "that don't make it on paper?" It's not too hard to imagine that I was bullied or put down for not fitting the ideal straight male parameters, but the lack of parental involvement is a fun one, which has been experienced by many seemingly stable middle-class black families. The story is thus: academically high-achieving black Boomers/Xers must take out loans to fund their education, without the benefit of access to familial wealth or well-paying work during college (re: hiring discrimination in the 70s, 80s, and 90s). This delays their entry into the housing market until, say, the early-mid 2000s. Additionally, their career advancement is stymied by the various forces that tend to hit black workers harder - being the first to get laid off and last to be hired during and after recessions; having more difficulty finding employers and mentors interested in their growth; wage discrimination curtailing opportunity that may require investment, like professional certifications or moving to a better job; having to take less ideal, more stressful positions in order to prove worth within an organization - meaning that there is less cash outside of the real estate investment to cushion a fall.

I suspect that all this had something to do with how little support I was able to get from them when I was applying for colleges in 2007. The stresses they were experiencing - stresses which were, in their intensity, in that moment in history, largely the domain of people of color - had material effects on my ability to make my case to America's higher education system. They had too much on their plate to help me, and no one knew anything was the matter because we were a middle class family headed by parents with professional or advanced degrees. None of the colleges knew that I was dealing with that - and my sexuality, and the divorce, and depression, and body dysphoria - as I groped my way blindly through the process, alone, high SAT score and decent GPA from a STEM magnet program in hand.

My final choice and subsequent experience were resultingly lackluster, in hindsight, and if someone involved in the process had known, maybe I could have made better decisions. All this is, is acknowledging the subtractive and deleterious effects some circumstances can have on this most important of tasks, and taking action; in America, the simple experiencing of racial animus is one of those circumstances, no matter how much portions of the country harrumph about level playing fields and the past being the past. Here, friends: look up, and see how the light of 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago glints off the present.

trianglem• 7 years ago

I'm not for the adversity score either but if anyone deserves an adversity boost it's people living in the projects.

ReverseCold• 7 years ago

The adversity score idea was dropped after a lot of backlash, but colleges still independently evaluate adversity in their own, differing, ways.

perl4ever2• 7 years ago

Some people might be fine with that, it's just the combination of an aptitude test with another type of metric they object to. Chicken soup and chocolate milk are both good, but maybe not mixed together.

purplezooey• 7 years ago

"Chronic adversity" is how I would describe a couple of the workplaces I've been in

crb002• 7 years ago

I can attest to this. ADHD (low dopamine) caused by chronic stress. On Adderall XR 10mg to counteract it.

Symptoms that suck which adderall doesn’t fix is OCD (brain looping on stuff), amphetamine caused anxiety (rarely but it sucks), and depression.

Steam room at my gym and hard exercise helps a lot. Need 8 hours of sleep. Intermittent fasting in the AM. Caffeine is a hard dial to set right.

taneq• 7 years ago

Are you saying that chronic stress causes ADHD?

andai2• 7 years ago

I had a similar experience. At a certain point in my life things got so bad I just didn’t want to know what was happening anymore.

chemeng• 7 years ago

I should hope not. Chronic stress and PTSD do have shared symptoms with ADHD, but do not cause it. ADHD is genetic and neurodevelopmental in origin. Functioning and symptoms do vary with stress though.

Of interest though is that the causality does run the other direction, with those who have ADHD at a higher risk of incidence for psychosocial trauma and development of PTSD subsequent to traumatic events.

andai2• 7 years ago

Have you tried cacao / chocolate instead of caffeine? Less unpleasant side effects in my experience.

username90• 7 years ago

Cacao contains caffeine.

thenaturalist• 7 years ago

Could you share a little context how that was diagnosed?

Like what's the bar for "low dopamine" with ADHD being identified as root cause? What type of doctor would do such a diagnosis?

Asking as I identify with the symptoms, but no idea where to start to check them.

HNLurker2• 7 years ago

Farewell but I can cope in other ways like: smoking. Point invalid

helge9210• 7 years ago

Prolonged stress exposure dampens response to stress?

thedudeabides5• 7 years ago

"The researchers found that other physiological responses to stress were also dampened in this group. For example, their blood pressure and cortisol levels did not increase as much as in the low-adversity group in response to stress."

Focusing on dopamine to try to predict negative outcomes seems weird here. Sounds like a just as viable title could be "people who have been through real adversity don't get stressed in trivial situations where someone calls them names"

Chronic adversity dampens dopamine production

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