Dopamine has numerous ways in which to express itself.
Decision-making in the brain is a complex process. Yet dopamine is sometimes seen as a excitatory agent underpinning the processing of many of the variables that go into decision-making in a uniform manner. Clever research with mice, however, suggests that the way that dopamine is expressed varies widely. In other words, dopamine is the same all over the brain as a substance. But the ways it manifests itself, and therefore the effects it has, are numerous. Dopamine neurons thereby facilitate the brain’s analysis of many different variables in making decisions.
Link to paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1261-9
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