neurotransmitter

Neurotransmitters certainly do mediate synapse growth and activity, but the brain is a complex adaptive organ, and it will adapt to modifications to neurotransmitter levels.

Consider all the folks languishing in prison for possession of small amounts of the wrong neurotransmitter agonist.

If neurotransmitter replacement works similarly, one can imagine a few problems that might crop up with a crashed brain.

It was recently found that glutamate, a neurotransmitter actually is an activator in mesolimbc dopaminergic pathways.

This neurotransmitter produced in the daphne raphei nuclues has previously only been associated with motor cortex operations and serotonergic pathways.

But if you get too high a concentration in the brain, it becomes too easy to make the neurotransmitter Phenethylamine.

In biology a single causation is almost always wrong, especially in correlation between such distant phenomena - neurotransmitter and conditioned behavior.

So a neurotransmitter precursor would seem to be a bit like steroids for the brain.

Basically any sensory stimulation alleviates depression, including (but not limited to) raising or lowering the levels of pretty much any neurotransmitter.

A lot of people reported improvement in their state - seems like exercise and better diet help balancing some neurotransmitter-related problems.

Then you also have rather more asymmetric synaptic behaviours such as volume transmission, where the neurotransmitter is diffused across a less well-defined area, rather than being kept neatly within a shared synaptic cleft.

There are other neurotransmitter-related changes, also changes in genes that affect brain development.

On the other hand, I think a good metaphor for it's complex role as a neurotransmitter is "bandwidth".

Neurotransmitter function is several orders of magnitude more complex, and can't simply be summarized as "too much" or "too little." For example, neurotransmitter signaling is often divided in to two components: Tonic and phasic release.

"Dimethylaminoethanol is related to choline and is a biochemical precursor to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine" (ACh).

One thing that has become increasingly clear is that the simplistic "too much x" or "too little y" theory of Mental illness as a "neurotransmitter imbalance" is flawed to the point of uselessness.

Neurotransmitters are how your brain does multicast electrochemical signalling; any message that's not just a local one between two synapses is travelling via a neurotransmitter.

Neurotransmitter reductionism is one of the more difficult pop-neuropsychiatry concepts to shake, because it's so tempting to think of neurotransmitters like serotonin in the same way we've come to think of more basic biomarkers like cholesterol levels or other hormone levels.