Dopamine System

in #dopamine2 years ago


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I can appreciate Dr. Kanojia's lesson, although some additional acknowledgement on the the non-uniqueness of the dopaminergic mechanisms may still be warranted -- many things operate with the dopamine system like this. There's also the point made by researchers like Christopher Ferguson that we're still, in many ways, in our infancy when it comes to the epidemiology of video game addiction; there are a lot of good reasons to be cautious about our estimates of its prevalence, severity, and assessment protocols. The whole realm of behavioral addictions besides gambling is hot territory for much debate and discussion, much of which has been fruitful, to be fair. This isn't to call into question the existence of a psychopathology of video game behavior, just to take into account the complexities of mapping pathological taxonomy onto neurological correlates, complexities that have historically been underappreciated by, for example, parents of children who play video games in the United States.