The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity―and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race

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From dopamine's point of view, it's not the having that matters. It's getting something – anything – that's new. From this understanding – the difference between possessing something versus anticipating it – we can understand in a revolutionary new way why we behave as we do in love, business, addiction, politics, religion – and we can even predict those behaviours in ourselves and others. The answer is found in a single chemical in your brain: dopamine. Dopamine ensured the survival of early man. Thousands of years later, it is the source of our most basic behaviors and cultural ideas—and progress itself.

Molecule of More By Daniel Z. Lieberman | Used - Wob The Molecule of More By Daniel Z. Lieberman | Used - Wob

The answer's dopamine. They're not able to transfer from that dopaminergic hope and anticipation into the here and now. So, what are these chemicals? For love, probably the most important chemical is oxytocin. That's a chemical many people have heard of. It's sometimes called the cuddle chemical. In The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—And Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race, psychiatrist Daniel Z. Liberman and physicist–turned–writer Michael E. Long have produced a book both confused and confusing. Its overblown title signals a kitchen-sink approach—too much, too repetitive, too speculative.It describes the fact that the initial buzz of something exciting doesn’t last and this is due to the effect of the molecule receding. Something else is needed to maintain the initial excitement, whether that be love at first sight, the taste of a new food, or the buzz you get when you produce your first music single or work of art. Kaitlin Luna: I want to touch on what you mentioned about addiction. So, addictions we’re hearing about this all the time now, especially with hard drugs like opioids, it's part of our national conversation. Many people obviously today are addicted to drugs. And what role does dopamine play in addiction and his or what has been the research in this area about dopamine? Dopamine responded not to reward, but to reward prediction error: the actual reward minus the expected reward. Now, with schizophrenia, we flip the equation. You've, you've got the dopamine circuit going off at inappropriate times. That's what that means is that you may see something that's completely neutral. Your dopamine circuit goes off and you develop the mistaken belief that it's about you. You're watching TV, and some radio or TV announcer is talking about some CIA spying program. All of a sudden, your dopamine circuit goes off for no reason. And you developed the idea that the CIA is spying on you.

PRAISE FOR THE MOLECULE OF MORE - injaplus.ir PRAISE FOR THE MOLECULE OF MORE - injaplus.ir

This is a very interesting book on how just one chemicaDaniel Lieberman: I think so. I think there's still an enormous amount of stigma. In general, brain illnesses are more stigmatized compared to other illnesses. But we're making progress. You're probably too young to remember. But, there was a time when having cancer was stigmatized. Daniel Lieberman: They do. Parkinson's disease is also an illness of too little dopamine, and we prescribed dopaminergic drugs to treat that, too. And in our book, we mentioned how that that could be very effective for Parkinson's symptoms. But, it can also get people into trouble. Our brain simply loves to get high and for a long time we couldn´t get good stuff from the outer world ( it must have been terrible) when we were still stonagey and before, but we had those fine centers for own opioids, own cannabinoids, but especially the other hormones that aren´t so fancy. No matter where we look, to the love in our beds, to the digital shopping card, enemies and frenemies at work, what we love and hate about political parties, we are wired to react like animals. So, I think that knowing and being able to recognize when your dopamine circuits active, when they're here on now, circuits active and is this really the way you want to behave? That's what's going to empower you. Further research on rats proved that dopamine activity was at its highest when animals received tasty food. Scientists named the parts of the brain involved in this reaction the dopamine reward circuit.

The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Bra… The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Bra…

Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more – more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge, that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put, it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet, at the same time, it's why we gamble and squander. Kaitlin Luna: Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, a biweekly podcast from the American Psychological Association. I'm your host, Kaitlin Luna. The topic for this episode is dopamine. It's known as the chemical of love, sex, creativity and addiction. Dopamine always wants more. It pushes us to achieve greatness but can also lead to our downfall. Our guests for this episode are Dr. Dan Lieberman, professor and vice chair for clinical affairs and department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the George Washington University, and Mike Long, a speech writer, screenwriter and playwright who teaches writing at Georgetown University. They co-wrote a book called The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, Creativity and will determine the fate of the human race. The book aims to explain the broad, profound influence of the dopamine “pleasure molecule” in everyday life, at cultural branching points in human history, and as a driving force in human evolution. But calling dopamine the pleasure molecule, as it commonly is, is a misnomer, say the authors. From dopamine’s point of view, “it’s not the having that matters. It’s getting something—anything—that’s new.” Control dopamine takes the excitement and motivation provided by desire dopamine, evaluates options, selects tools, and plots a strategy to get what it wants. And yet, dopamine remains and correct me if I'm wrong, Dan, at the same levels. It's always been more or less here. Here we go, and dopamine has to have something to do. And that leads to these cultural effects. These cultural conflicts. These personal experiences that are — are sometimes frustrating. Sometimes, curious and strange. And that's where we went with the book is understanding how dopamine got us to this point, how it explains so much trouble we find ourselves in today and so many curious experiences we have.Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more-more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge, that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put, it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet, at the same time, it's why we gamble and squander. Mike Long: Dopamine sets us up to appreciate the world, to experience the world in two ways. And for me, this was, this was a revelatory. We have things that we appreciate — the color of your top right now, the color of the walls of the room, the feel of this table, a taste of a cup of water here I have. Things that we experience in the moment. We appreciate what they're like. That's one way we spend our time. Daniel Lieberman: So, you know, people will take amphetamine and it will make them work harder. It will make them more excited. It will focus them in on being goal directed, but eventually it will also ruin their life. So, artificially boosting dopamine is not the best strategy for a successful life.