Dopamine Made You Do It

Your dopamine neurons can be polled when you need to make a decision. What should I order from the menu? You imagine each item, and your dopamine cells provide an estimate of the expected reward. Should I marry this person? Your dopamine cells will give you a gut opinion that is more trustworthy than reasoning. Problems with many different dimensions are the most difficult to decide. How do you trade off a sense of humor in a mate, a good dimension, against being messy, a bad dimension, or hundreds of other comparisons? Your brain’s reward systems reduce all these dimensions down to a common currency, the transient dopamine signal. Dopamine neurons receive inputs from a part of the brain called the basal ganglia, which in turn receive input from the entire cerebral cortex. The basal ganglia evaluate cortical states and are involved with learning sequences of motor actions to achieve a goal.