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The Brain and Addiction
Images and text for this gallery courtesy of The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) http://165.112.78.61/NIDAHome.html.

<< 6/12 < > The synapse and the process of chemical neurotransmission is as follows: as an electrical impulse arrives at the terminal, it triggers vesicles containing a neurotransmitter, such as dopamine (in blue), to move toward the terminal membrane . The vesicles fuse with the terminal membrane to release their contents (in this case, dopamine). Once inside the synaptic cleft (the space between the 2 neurons) the dopamine can bind to specific proteins called dopamine receptors (in pink) on the membrane of a neighboring neuron. This is illustrated in more detail on the next slide.

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