The brain and motivation

Hi, I hate doing planka, but I need planka because it makes me look and feel better. However, I lack the motivation of doing this. And I'm pretty sure that many of you may understand. So let's talk about the biology of motivation. Let's start with the definitions. I know it's boring, but it's necessary, otherwise we will not understand each other. So, the motivation is a goal-directed vehicle. It's necessary for survival, for adaptation, and for learning. Across all species actually. And it is controlled by the brain, by the circuits or systems of the regions involved in undercoming regulation. So, as many of you may know, the commitment is necessary for the reward and for the feeling and experiencing the pleasure. However, this is a very complicated system. If we talk about motivation, it's very important to say that the motivation is based on the reinforcement learning. So, we learn by getting a reward. And the reward in this case is the release of dopamine. Three regions of the brain are involved in the regulation of motivation. The first one is the ventral tegmental area. It's located in the midbrain and it includes a lot of dopaminergic neurons that project to other regions of the brain. Then it goes by striatum. It's a very ancient area of the brain too. And this area is very important for the sensation of the pleasure and for the hedonistic aspects of motivation. And the last area is called the frontal area of the cortex. And it encodes our anticipation of the reward, our planning of the achievement of the reward, and all other higher cognitive functions involved in the goal directly forward. It is not true. Recent studies also show that endocannabinoids play a crucial role in the retuning of the dopaminergic system in motivation and reward behavior. How does it work? It works in the following order. We have a dopaminergic neuron. It fires, it releases some dopamine. Then we have the next neuron. And it releases endocannabinoids as feedback to the first dopaminergic neuron. And basically it says if it is enough or it's not enough for the next neuron to continue its work and to continue to propagate this neuron. So the endocannabinoid system is very crucial also in the aspects of pathology and brain health. Because the prolonged consumption of synthetic cannabinoids leads to apathy. And this is a pathological behavior described as a lack of motivation. So think next time if you want to smoke something if you really need it. Or maybe you can just go and swim or other physical activities you would have. Your brain just flourishing after release of your own endocannabinoids. Also it's important to mention serotonin. Serotonin as you may know is very important for mood and for good mood also. But in the case of motivation behavior again it works as a modulator and a switch between these solutions. Mostly the results that we had about the motivation circuit in the brain came from the experiments on animals. So these experiments included the following setup. The animal had to do a sequence of actions. For example a press of the level after hearing some cues. And then if the animal completed the test in the right order. Then the animal received a positive feedback in the form of sweet water or something pleasing. In all the cases the deconversion system was involved. And more interesting when the researchers could measure the work of dopaminergic neurons in all areas from VTA to prefrontal area. They found out actually that the dopamine was released not by the end of the task when the animal received the reward and felt the pleasure. No, the dopamine was released during the anticipation of the reward. During the planning by the animal of the action to complete the task. And only after this when the dopamine was released the animal felt pleasure. Think about it. This is very important because it means that we feel the pleasure after completing some tasks. It means in another words the effort is the reward itself. Or the path is the reward itself. Ok, what happens if we do a lot of actions and we don't have a reward? Then you lose the motivation of doing this. This is the core of all types of burnout actually. Also another scenario is possible when you get a reward when you don't expect it. Yes, then you can also remember that this action or this place or this something was useful because you got the reward. But it works only in the case if you didn't expect it. If you start to get the reward or something nice without making an effort then the reward becomes unpredictable and it stops to be a reward. So then basically it works. And finally if you receive a negative response after doing something it also enables your brain to remember this behavior and to change it. So it's actually very crucial. Negative feedback is also feedback. For which types of motivation does this circuit work? For all of them. Starting from food consumption and ending in self-realization. Because all complex things start with very simple moments. And now I need to stop talking and finally go and do my planka. Thank you.