00:01
So when you are considering the medications that affect change by impacting neurotransmitters, there are three main terms for you to remember.
00:15
So the first term is agonist.
00:24
The second is antagonist.
00:28
Even though that word sounds really similar, the way in which it affects change is a fairly different antagonist.
00:36
And the second term that you're going to want to know is a re -uptake inhibitor.
00:50
And for now, i'm just going to abbreviate that as r .i.
00:57
And these are the three different types of categories of medications that impact neurotransmitters.
01:06
And so in order to understand how these different classes of medications work, it's important to understand how neurotransmitters work in general and how they transport information throughout the brain.
01:18
And so the way that neurotransmitters transport that information throughout the brain is through the neurons in the brain.
01:31
And so here we have the depiction of the end of one neuron in the beginning of a second neuron.
01:41
And the way that the brain transports information from neuron to neuron is that the information travels through the first neuron is an electrical signal.
01:56
However, when it reaches the end of that first neuron, it reaches this gap between the first neuron and the second neuron.
02:05
And that gap is called a synapse.
02:07
And even though we have millions of neurons in our brain, and as a result, that gap between neurons is very, very tiny, even that super, super small gap is too wide for an electrical signal to pass -through.
02:25
Because electric can't pass through a gap.
02:28
And so our brain, luckily, is very smart.
02:32
And even without us having to think about it at all, our brain changes that electrical signal, that electrical impulse into a chemical one.
02:41
And so it changes it into a form that can be released and that can travel through the synapse.
02:48
And that chemical that's released is the neurotransmitter.
02:54
And so those neurotransmitters travel across the synapse.
03:02
And when they reach the second synapse, they reach, sorry, when they reach the second neuron, they are taken in through the receptors in the second neuron.
03:18
And so the reason why this is important is if you think about the type of information that neurotransmitters are responsible for.
03:26
So, for example, in the field of mental health, we often talk about neurotransmitters like dopamine or serotonin or neuroepine.
03:36
And dopamine is responsible for really important functioning, things like mood and sleep and learning, appetite, happiness, or pleasure.
03:48
Serotonin is similar related to things like appetite and mood.
03:53
And so these things are really important for our day -to -day fun...