Is there science behind dopamine fasting? The latest in bizarre Silicon Valley trends sees extreme practitioners abstain from activities that entail physical pleasure including food, exercise, social media, videogames and even talking in an attempt to reset the brain’s reward system, Live Science reports. The concept first picked up steam after an NYT article titled “How to feel nothing now, in order to feel more later,” was published.

What does it do? Advocates of the practise report feeling more focused and finding more joy in the activities they have previously avoided, the reasoning being that they have deprived their brain of the quick dopamine hits that say checking social media or taking a sip of coffee stimulates. Clinical psychiatry professor at UC San Francisco Cameron Sepah, who helped popularize the technique through a published guide explained to Vox that, “taking a break from behaviors that trigger strong amounts of dopamine release (especially in a repeated fashion) allows our brain to recover and restore itself.”

But dopamine is more than just our brain’s “pleasure chemical”: Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that serves many functions in the brain, and is incorrectly thought to be a “feel-good” chemical. In reality it does not work by triggering feelings of pleasure and happiness in the brain’s reward center, Emory University neuroscientist Michael Treadway explains, but acts as a sort of “switchboard” that helps us regulate our energy and motivate us to achieve tasks. One of the many brain networks that rely on dopamine to communicate is the mesolimbic reward pathway, which sends dopamine out to other brain regions that shape memory, expectations, emotions and reactions about rewards.

So, what’s the idea behind dopamine fasts? The technique echoes an addiction treatment therapy called “stimulus control” where problematic triggers are removed from an addict’s vicinity in an attempt to wean their brain’s reward system off of the thing they are addicted to, said Sepah. This technique is also used in cognitive behavioural therapy as a way to rewire the brain away from unhelpful impulses. Dopamine fasts are also modern manifestations of centuries-old meditation techniques and monastic lifestyles, which have long held that periods of enforced restraint and asceticism are beneficial for our overall sense of wellbeing.

Can you actually fast from dopamine like you do from food? Technically No: You can’t fully stop your body from producing dopamine through lifestyle changes, says Treadway, and if you could, it would be fatal.

It’s actually a stimulation fast: The idea of connecting arousal and pleasure to the brain chemical dopamine is wrong, says Poldrack. "You can totally block the dopamine system and it doesn't change a human or an animal's ability to feel pleasure," Poldrack said. "What it changes is the degree to which they want things out in the world, and the degree to which they will actually go do something to get those things."

Why does it have a reputation as ridiculous? Though dopamine fasting does have a legitimate scientific basis, Silicon Valley has taken the practice to an extreme in a bid to boost productivity, with some of its practitioners going to extremes such as not using electricity, or refusing to leave the house or make eye contact. But from a community of people who have promoted fads as outlandish as microdosing recreational substances at work to boost creativity and drinking unfiltered river water to boost immunity, this trend seems relatively benign, and might even be useful.

Either way, zoning out from modern life’s stimuli probably isn’t a bad idea: “It certainly sounds plausible that taking a break from obsessively checking your social media account and partying every night is good for you. [It’s] just unlikely to have much to do with dopamine per se,” University of California professor of neurology Joshua Berke told the BBC.