This title though...

Guess you don't need to know that dopamine was originally called "prolactin-inhibiting hormone" and strongly suppresses prolactin-driven physiology and behavior.

You also apparently don't need to understand how dopamine is made in melanated substantia nigra cells whose overall proliferation is cocontrolled by proopiomelanocortin breakdown products.

(The dopamine-prolactin-melanin linkage is why "big t**** goth gf" is a stereotype.)

I mean, if i went into that kind of detail the piece would be about 200,000 words and include a ton of detail that nobody cares about.

I made some judgements about what is interesting and worth knowing and what isn't – and even that came out at ~8k words.

Thanks for the feedback though.

There are all kinds of widespread misconceptions about what dopamine does and doesn't do.

In this post, I attempt to dispel all of them while presenting an up-to-the-minute picture of what we do actually know about dopamine.

It's long but it's thorough.