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I'm pretty familiar with the results of having not enough dopamine, though the reasons are not so clear to me.

To get a better insight on the topic I'd like to know something about having too much dopamine:

  1. What behaviour is result of having too much dopamine?
  2. Why does it happen?

I am aiming to get insight in disease states associated with excess dopamine, not drug-induced states.

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    $\begingroup$ There has been done studies that overactive dopamine system may result in schizophrenia. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC33999 $\endgroup$ – CuriousSuperhero Nov 27 '14 at 9:00
  • $\begingroup$ Many psychostimulant drugs (cocain, meth etc.) induce DA release. Treatment with DA antagonists may in the end induce a state resembling an excess of DA transmission in the brain. The behavioral effects of both scenarios are very different. Perhaps your question needs some specification? $\endgroup$ – AliceD♦ Nov 27 '14 at 12:54
  • $\begingroup$ @ChrisStronks What should I specify? $\endgroup$ – Tomáš Zato - Reinstate Monica Nov 27 '14 at 13:05
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    $\begingroup$ Perhaps specify the area of research you are targeting (drugs/disease/...); you could specify brain areas where it occurs; you could think about acute versus chronic effects; - as of now the question is quite broad and hard to answer. Just trying to help. It's interesting material! – $\endgroup$ – AliceD♦ Nov 27 '14 at 13:31
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    $\begingroup$ I think the problem is that I have very narrow knowledge of the topic. I'm targeting for disease (not result of drugs) and I'm looking for something that is basically inverse of ADHD - so the the same brain areas as those that are lacking dopamine during ADD/ADHD syndrome. $\endgroup$ – Tomáš Zato - Reinstate Monica Nov 27 '14 at 13:35
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Too much dopamine release in the striatum may lead to psychosis, and especially to the positive symptoms associated with this disease (e.g., delusions and hallucinations, as opposed to the negative symptoms such as a flattened affect) (Laruelle et al., 1999).

The etiology of psychosis is complex. Many direct and indirect environmental factors are implicated, as well as genetic factors. Environmental factors include obstetric complications and frequent cannabis or amphetamine use. The environmental factors are all implicated stronger in psychosis than genetic causes. Genetic predisposition and environmental factors may also interact in complex ways in the development of psychosis (Howes & Kapur, 2009).

References
- Howes & Kapur, Schizophrenia Bulletin (2009); 35(3): 549–62
- Laruelle et al., Biol Psychiatry (1999); 46:56–72

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I came across this list of effects of dopamine on cognition (from the book "Cupid's poisoned arrow").

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ Although there may be some truth in this, the source's author is a lawyer and the book is not really scientific huffingtonpost.com/marnia-robinson -1 $\endgroup$ – AliceD♦ Aug 18 '15 at 2:08
  • $\begingroup$ The book has dozens of other article references, I need to look up to see if they are referencing any particular scientific studies as a source for this list. $\endgroup$ – Alex Stone Aug 19 '15 at 17:53

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