Welcome to the NEW Baltimore County volunteer site! We encourage agencies in Baltimore County and the surrounding communities to create a profile to highlight their volunteer needs. We invite people searching for volunteer opportunities to use either the quick search tool above or register as a volunteer from the drop-down menu at the top of the page.
By inhibiting the dopamine transporter, a dopamine reuptake inhibitor increases the body's extracellular concentrations of dopamine, which in turn increases dopaminergic neurotransmission and creates feelings of pleasure or even euphoria. A dopamine reuptake inhibitor has a number of medical applications.
Researchers are still not sure exactly how opiate drugs cause this increase in dopamine, but one theory says that when the opiate binds to the receptors on the third neuron shown, that neuron releases less GABA, which is a neurotransmitter that inhibits dopamine.The reason that some neurons have special receptors for opiates is probably that there are naturally occuring opiates in the brain.). This causes the amount of dopamine in the synaptic clefts in the reward pathway to increase dramatically, as shown in the close-up of the synaptic cleft to the left.