Why Stimulants Help ADHD | Highlights and Annotations by Gistr.

neurons from collecting the dopamine they’ve already released, it stimulates them to release more of it. but both types of stimulants specifically help increase tonic dopamine levels, by leaving more dopamine out between the cells. the idea is that this is closer to what’s happening in a typical brain. arousal goes up, and since there’s plenty of tonic dopamine to go around, the phasic dopamine response gets smaller. all of that leads to less of a need to get more stimulation from your environment, which makes it much easier to focus. so for a lot of people diagnosed with ADhd, these stimulants can help a lot. there are other treatment options, but they’re generally less effective. but their widespread availability leads to a lot of people using them recreationally with ADHD have chronically underaroused brains, and that stimulants help by increasing their arousal. to be clear, arousal in this context just means less brain activity in certain regions. when someone’s brain is underaroused, it can mean their neurons aren’t firing as much in certain regions, or that some neurotransmitters, the chemicals that communicate signals between neurons, aren’t flowing properly. according to the low arousal theory, this leads you to look for new stimulation in your environment to jumpstart your neural activity. and from the outside, that looks like you’re hyperactive or just inattentive. more specifically, the disorder has to do with where you find dopamine, a neurotransmitter related to the brain's pleasure and reward responses. generally, more dopamine translates to a greater feeling of reward. when your dopamine levels are high, you just feel … good. one way to measure this is called the tonic dopamine level, which is how much dopamine is kind of hanging out between your neurons already. but there’s also phasic dopamine, which is what your neurons release based