Too Much Dopamine, Threat Perception, and Stress

Why More is Not Necessarily a Good Thing

I recently re-discovered a science article, “Dopamine Primes the Brain for Enhanced Vigilance” which, in re-reading has risen in importance since I first read it, because it confirms what

Lilian Sjøberg

of

The HOPE shortcut

has been telling for some time: the so-called orienting reflex or alert state in response to potential stressors/threats/dangers is mediated by dopamine release.

A Map of Stress Responses

Examples of the “orienting response” include when a deer hears a noise in the woods, raises it head, stands very still, and turns it ears towards the noise, or the reaction you have an instant after someone bumps into you, snapping you out of being engrossed by the text on your phone. It is an evaluative state, for your nervous system to determine if there is a truly a threat, in which case to quickly proceed onward to a flight, fight or freeze response, or it is a false alarm, in which case to return attention to rewarding activities.

The authors in the above mentioned article found that there is a neural switch which is activated by a surge in dopamine. This switch is responsible for changing attention away from rewarding activities toward the threat evaluation mode of the orienting reflex.

One important ramification for this is that if there is too much dopamine in the brain, this may activate this switching of attention away from rewarding activities to threat evaluation too often or too readily. Indeed, according to the article:

“Dysregulation of this dopamine-controlled switching may contribute to neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia... among other effects, too much dopamine could lead the brain to weigh negative inputs too highly… this could result in paranoia, often seen in schizophrenia patients, or anxiety [and depression].”

This could therefore also hold true for those of us who are supplementing exogenous dopamine precursors such as l-tyrosine or l-dopa, or are on high levels of dopaminergic drugs prescribed for Parkinson’s or ADHD. Indeed, this would match Lilian’s own experience working with folks with Parkinson’s, because she has noticed those clients on higher levels of dopamine drugs are more likely to have their body memories of stressful or traumatic episodes constantly triggered. Lilian goes on to say:

“… and guess what will happen if you add more dopamine to this equation: you will easier and easier reach the threshold where the body "fires" the response fight, flight and freeze. Actually a pattern that I have felt in my clients.”

So too much dopamine is a double whammy when it comes to over-active stress responses. Not only could it make one overly sensitized to threat perception, but also, because there is then more dopamine available to turn into adrenaline (recall adrenaline is made from dopamine). This makes it is more likely that the perceived threat will actually tip into more severe fight, flight, or freeze responses.

Its Not Too Little Dopamine, Its Too Much Adrenaline/Noradrenaline

A second ramification is for those of us in an acute stressful situation, or are having a lot of chronic stress or trauma to deal with, since we are likely to be on a hair trigger for threat perception and be hyper-vigilant. For example, a person suffering from noisy neighbours may be vigilant to noise starting up again, and not be able to relax, even when it is temporarily quiet.

This stress or trauma induced vigilance towards potential threats could mean we will be constantly activating the threat detection switch and thus releasing surges of dopamine to this circuit. The dopamine surge then being available for turning into adrenaline. This frequent, repeated surging of dopamine will also quickly begin to eat up supplies of the building blocks of dopamine, l-tyrosine and l-dopa, so that then not enough is left for generating dopamine for other activities.

Thus, when it comes to attention towards rewarding activity, motivation, or movement, it may appear like we have low dopamine, simply because the threat detection circuit is repeatedly gobbling up all the supplies. If this is indeed the case, then once again, stress and trauma, causes symptoms indistinguishable to those of truly “low dopamine” states. More exogenous dopamine supplies is not the answer either, because this just provides more feed-stock for triggering threat perception and fight, flight or freeze responses.

So, basically, with too much dopamine, we never feel safe and are rarely calm.

For much more about the role of dopamine and adrenaline in chronic symptoms, and what we can pragmatically do about it, I have developed an online course:

Also I highly recommend Lilian’s new book “Interviews with People with Parkinson's: Clients in inspirational conversations (The Shortcut to HOPE and healing)”