“Dopamine is not so much about the pleasure of consuming something, it’s about the motivation to obtain something that’s signaled by dopamine,” Düzel explains. The actual role of dopamine in our brains, he says, is to determine when we should approach something to learn more about it. Düzel explained that dopamine signals to our motor system that we have to do something—and only then does it trigger the learning process. Dopamine, in short, is not the pleasure neurotransmitter; it is the motivation neurotransmitter.
