Skip to main content

Drive and Motivation

Outcome Cns

Willingness to start things and to keep going. Reported separately from mood and separately from libido, and it moves separately: compounds exist that lift mood and flatten drive, and the reverse.

Relationships

2 connections

Drive and Motivation stimulates

Dopamine Signalling

How strongly dopamine is signalling, mostly in the reward and motivation circuits. This is the route by which a compound that raises prolactin ends up flattening drive: dopamine holds prolactin down, so a sustained prolactin rise is read backwards as reduced dopaminergic tone.

Drive and Motivation suppresses

Withdrawal Syndrome

The cluster that arrives after stopping, while the natural axis is still shut down: flat mood, no drive, no libido, disturbed sleep, and in some cases suicidal thoughts. Separated from dependence because dependence is about the pull to continue and this is about what happens when you do not. It is the window in which almost all of the serious psychiatric events in the literature occur.