How Dopamine & Serotonin Shape Decisions, Motivation & Learning | Dr. Read Montague
Huberman Lab
Scicomm Media
4.8 • 30.3K Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2026
⏱️ 161 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | If any goal that you achieved, whatever it is, taking a drug, eating a food, getting a partner |
| 0:08.8 | or whatnot, if that was enough for you right then, you wouldn't keep living. You want that system |
| 0:16.3 | to keep tracking, and once it gets to one place, you want it to have another place to which it could go. |
| 0:22.7 | Otherwise, you wouldn't live. |
| 0:24.2 | Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. |
| 0:32.9 | I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. |
| 0:39.4 | My guest today is Dr. Reed Montague. |
| 0:41.8 | Dr. Reed Montague is the director of the Center for Human Neuroscience Research at Virginia Tech. |
| 0:46.5 | He is also an expert in the science of motivation, decision making, and learning, and a pioneer in developing methods to directly measure levels of dopamine |
| 0:54.9 | and other neuromodulators in humans in real time. Today you'll learn how dopamine really works, |
| 1:00.7 | not just to regulate your levels of motivation, we've all heard that before, but also to teach you |
| 1:05.7 | things. Dopamine is involved in learning, as well as persistence or lack of persistence. |
| 1:12.1 | As Reed will teach you, |
| 1:16.8 | most of what we hear and know about dopamine is based on the idea that dopamine levels go up or down depending on our levels of expectations and then what happens. But as he explains, |
| 1:22.7 | most aspects of life, work, school, relationships, our pursuit of money, et cetera, |
| 1:29.3 | involve multiple milestones. We work, we wait, then we get an outcome that in turn informs the thing we do next. |
| 1:34.3 | Or maybe dopamine arrives suddenly with no work involved at all. |
| 1:37.3 | In other words, dopamine levels are constantly changing and that shapes not just what you do now, |
| 1:43.3 | but how you think about your recent past |
| 1:45.3 | and what you will do next. So when we say dopamine is involved in learning, today you are going |
| 1:50.6 | to realize that dopamine is teaching you how to adjust your behavior. We of course discuss how |
| 1:55.6 | this knowledge can be leveraged for better motivation and decision making, even better social |
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