"Moreover, a similar activation pattern related to lifetime ADHD may suggest that the impact of early life stress on ADHD may possibly be mediated by a dysfunctional reward pathway."
What is a dysfunctional reward pathway?
What is a dysfunctional reward pathway?
Basically a lower-than-expected response to reward anticipation and a higher-than-expected response upon reward delivery.
I.e. the typical ADHD problem of instant vs delayed gratification and how the brain responds to it.
Neurotypical people’s brains seem to be better at rewarding in anticipation and not just on actual delivery.
IIUC
My whole life I could barely sustain a conversation with someone because the moment they started speaking I'd reflexively begin thinking about something else. But when I tried Adderall I could actually have genuine conversations with people, hearing them and thinking about what they were saying and then responding, doing this repeatedly for many minutes. It felt like a superpower.
sometimes i try to reward myself conscious of something and it works. for example i think conscious about how if i finish a little task it would make me happier. then i kind of force a reward feeling towards the anticipation to have something done. and it works. i feel motivated to do little tasks. and if i do this repeatedly and on bigger and bigger tasks it reduces my adhd symptoms… but then there is suddenly something else to do and then i do this while thinking about the things i should do and what i could do next and suddenly i start 10 things and how the fuck did this happen … where are my keyes? :)
I used to have a little jingle I'd subvocally sing: "Badge, wallet, keys, notes, laptop, phone; Owen's fed, doors locked, leaving home". It was my checklist. It's why I'll throw my backpack in the car even if I'm going to meet friends: It just helps me put aside the preparation anxiety to just do the same thing every time.
Those routines are helpful. I also keep prepacked bags - a backpack for work, a gym bag with copies of keys for gym, etc etc. I even have two or three pre-stocked wallets for those bags or I'll get stuck in optimizing my credit card selection for an activity. My wife laughs, but she's the one who loses her phone, cannot find her wallet, and to this day has no idea where her car keys are.
Atomic Habits was helpful. It's about how to set up your subconcious so you don't have to painfully think about every decision all the time. Maybe it's made me less able, maybe not. But going to the gym at 3 has become so routine that I find myself up in the kitchen before I realize why I left my office.
I'm guessing this is all pre-emergent dementia, honestly.
That utility alone accounts for gambling addiction. Consider that slot machines are a game of random chance against fixed odds. Every time you play the chance of winning is random against the same odds just like the last time. The more a person plays consecutively without winning, a losing streak, the more the brain anticipates winning the next time which builds dopamine anticipation in the brain even though a person is just as likely to continue losing into the future on each iteration.
What's more interesting is that this addiction behavior can be flicked on or off instantly, like a light switch, with medication. What's more strange though is that medically induced gambling addiction, yes that is a very real thing, effects females far more than males. I don't know if the cause of difference in behavior by sex is identified.
I have some addictive/compulsive behaviors that have been hard to shake. GLP-1 agonists look promising, but I'm not sure how to get a prescription since I'm not overweight.
My suggestion, and I am not doctor or providing medical advise, is to make the addictive stimulus inconvenient. Each iteration must include more steps to increase labor of effort and each iteration must also take much longer to complete. This will re-balance the brain from prior established condition. The more painful, disconnected, or costly (in time and not money) an activity becomes the more dedicated you must become about achieving that activity before addiction can set in.
Assumes there is a limit to the amount of effort addicts are willing to put into getting their next dose. Easily disproved by the experience of caring for opioid addicts. Lesser drugs, even. Once upon a time, a seemingly rational benzodiazepine addict got so frustrated with my attempts to get him off of it he rose up from his seat ready to punch me in the face.
There are addicts out there who would sell their own mother for a dose. And I'm not just saying that. One of my former neighbours turned into one of these guys. People wouldn't believe the stories if I told them.
Kind of. The captain of the ship is motivated, but the helmsman needs to get his shit together.
I thought dopamine was both the anticipatory neurotransmitters and the reward. But the reward neurotransmitters are different, they're your endorphins, endogenous opioids.
If dopamine only happened once you received a reward, it would not cause you to get you to actually act before hand.
It's still hacking the brain if you make the perfect Skinner box and take all their life savings and then some
Dysfunctional brain : The reverse.
(Which makes me go hmm)