My professor and I have been writing back in forth with the tone of trying to understand the current material, below is an email she responded with. Isn't this fascinating??
With regard to how drugs can affect synapses, there are a variety of sites and ways, for example they can increase the number of impulses, release neurotransmitters from vesicles with or without impulses, block re-uptake or block receptors, produce more or less neurotransmitters, prevent vesicles from releasing neurotransmitters, and so on - so you can see it's quite a diverse range of responses. Different drugs will also affect the synapses in different ways. Like methamphetamine alters dopamine transmission by causing the release of the dopamine neurotransmitter from vesicles and by blocking dopamine transporters from pumping dopamine back into the transmitting neuron. This causes more dopamine to remain in the cleft, which causes neurons to fire more often than normal resulting in euphoria.
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