Dysphoric milk ejection reflex to nipple/areolar stimulation, thoughts of the baby or of breastfeeding, or overfull breasts, travels through both brain and bloodstream, causing emotional changes in the brain and the release of milk in the breast. Prolactin, released in a gradual wave that peaks after the beginning of a feeding, is responsible for continued milk production. Dopamine inhibits the release of prolactin, so dopamine levels must drop in order for prolactin levels to rise. Some speculate that the necessary dopamine drop is similar to (and timed with) the oxytocin spike – a sort of negative image – but that in D-MER mothers it
Psychological refractory period caffeine intake have also been investigated. PRP is a product of the psychological refractory period paradigm, a paradigm in which two different stimuli are presented in rapid succession, each requiring a fast response. Stimulus onset asynchrony, the time that lapses between the presentations of the two stimuli, acts as the "independent variable" in this paradigm, and the reaction time to the second stimulus acts as the "dependent variable". An example of a PRP paradigm might be that there is a task 1 which requires participants to push the keyboard-letter 'n' with the right index finger when a square frame was