 These pathways and cell groups form a dopamine system which is neuromodulatory.In popular culture and media, dopamine is usually seen as the main chemical of pleasure, but the current opinion in pharmacology is that dopamine instead confers motivational salience; in other words, dopamine signals the perceived motivational prominence (i.e., the desirability or aversiveness) of an outcome, which in turn propels the organism's behavior toward or away from achieving that outcome.Outside the central nervous system, dopamine functions primarily as a local paracrine messenger.