The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts That Make Us Overeat

by Stephan Guyenet

You may have heard that dopamine is the “pleasure chemical,” responsible for causing the neurochemical rush that makes us feel really good as we win a race, have sex, eat chocolate, or smoke crack cocaine. Although that idea is common in popular science writing, it has long been out of date within the scientific community. As a matter of fact, dopamine release doesn’t correspond very well with the experience of pleasure. Experiments have shown that animals appear to experience pleasure without dopamine, and studies in humans back this up. Pleasure is more related to a class of chemicals called endorphins that are often released in the striatum simultaneously with dopamine, although these are probably only one component of the experience of pleasure. Dopamine is the “learning chemical” rather than the “pleasure chemical.”