>*Is it possible to reduce dopamine naturally?* I will attempt to answer your question. Firstly, we need to ask the following question. **Question #1:** Why does **dopamine** increase/decrease in people who stutter? **Answer**: According to [this](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352029918_STUTTERING_DOPAMINE_AND_INCENTIVE_LEARNING) research, people who stutter have different triggers that result in stuttering. Triggers, such as: * anticipating or perceiving stuttering, communication failure, or negative listener responses, or sensing a loss of control This trigger (such as, anticipation) will initially cause: (1) an increase in synaptic **dopamine**, and then (2) if we perceive this anticipation as punishing, will cause a decrease in synaptic **dopamine**, resulting in inhibiting approach behaviors towards that anticipated punishment, that cause us to produce stuttering, and a resultant impairment of incentive learning. Perceived anticipation results in: * a decrease of the ‘signal-to-noise ratio” of speech plans * a general increase in responsivity * realizing that they are eliciting more negative responses from listeners * an increase in the release threshold * perceiving the speech plan to be less appropriate and to contain more errors * an increase in sensitivity so that the rises in synaptic **dopamine** are more rewarding (pleasurable) and the falls in **dopamine** are more punishing * and then PWS find that they cannot execute planned words (aka stuttering). **So**, stuttering occurs as a direct result of phasic reductions in synaptic **dopamine**, brought on by the perception or anticipation of communication failure. **Question #2:** How can we naturally avoid any alteration in **dopamine** levels when experiencing a stutter trigger? **Answer**: Step 1: Identify & analyze your many reactions and responses, the presence of reactions and responses especially in perceivably fluent speech. Perceivably fluent speech in a PWS does not equate to the absence of reactions and responses to stuttering Step 2: Accept (aka acknowledge) that such behaviors may represent anticipatory reactions and responses, impacting motor planning in the speech production phase, or are attempting external articulatory timing or onset Step 3: * Reflect your anticipatory reactions and responses to the internal realization of stuttering - which even when subtle, may represent a significant internal conflict * Gain a better understanding about [motor planning](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4545974/) in stuttering (see [scientific models](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=589398076&sxsrf=AM9HkKk_bR-I5jIzkZ7mBO1gt8o2iHyVaA:1702136076617&q=%22stuttering+%22motor+planning%22&uds=AMIYvT95aNruTlpHnDS4aLrkVNg2Q3TV0cvylipBAn5tMngiTjWS6reZAR4_PfQ5kt9T6ehhhN0nCUplixqtRmyVtVpyiEmifOC5uzvDn9NRijNagesmpISp0TADnfpX4O4RMb28J2PI&udm=2&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJwNKB14KDAxVhhv0HHdvyAOwQtKgLegQICBAB&biw=1745&bih=835&dpr=1.1): linguistic-symbolic planning, motor planning, motor programming, and execution) * If you anticipate stuttering: * increase the ‘signal-to-noise ratio” of speech plans * decrease in responsivity * don't perceive anticipation as eliciting more negative responses from listeners * don't link anticipation to an increase in the release threshold * perceive the speech plan to be more appropriate and to contain less errors * decrease in sensitivity so that the rises in synaptic dopamine are less rewarding (pleasurable) and the falls are less punishing Importantly note, vocal tension makes the voice sound tense and strained, and this may be interpreted by the listener that we must be anxious or insecure or fearful or something like that. The listener may then respond negatively to us, because the listener finds our tone of voice unattractive. This can be a major problem for us if we are trying to sound confident or trying to impress the listener - in which case we are likely to interpret our own tense voice negatively -because it doesn't fit the confident image that we are trying to convey. This is especially a problem for us if our ego and self-esteem are dependent on how confidently we are able to come over to the people we speak to. So, in such cases, our own negative evaluations of our performance (or of our anticipated performance) leads to neural impairments such as a phasic drop in synaptic dopamine and to blocking. There may be variation in how we evaluate vocal tension from word to word. So, for example, we may consider it important to sound confident when saying certain words but not other words. We may convince ourselves repeatedly that certain feared words are difficult to pronounce. This story-telling justifies our believe that sound is difficult to speak, and if this makes sense to us we start forming an association between such story and the feared sound. **Conclusion:** All these environmental or psychological factors - trigger the inner conflict such as emotional, cognitive and linguistic demands and expectations - disrupting the initiation of speech motor programs - that then lead to a decrease in synaptic dopamine release, resulting in impaired activation of the neural pathways of the cortico-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical loop, and then we stutter. By unlearning or unlinking triggers from inhibiting/initiating speech plans, we can resolve the dopamine problem.