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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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. 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 behaviors in ourselves and others. Kaitlin Luna: So, for people with serious mental illness, I mean, what is, what does dopamine do to a break someone's brain. And how is that treated? Kaitlin Luna: Absolutely. That’s what it seems like. It does push the tide more. And I mean, something like opioids is affecting so many people and friends, family, that sort of thing.

Book Genre: Biology, Brain, Health, Neuroscience, Nonfiction, Personal Development, Psychology, Relationships, Science, Self Help Another interesting anecdote is the idea that almost anything can become addicting if it triggers your dopamine circuits. I experienced this myself one year when I went on four separate multi-day vacations each precisely one month apart. After returning home from the fourth trip, I spent an entire week planning number five until I eventually talked myself out of it. I have personally found it true that any repeated behavior that gives me a positive hit of dopamine can become something that I crave again and again. For some people it’s an injection of heroin, for others it’s getting on an airplane to a vacation destination.An atom is the simplest particle of an element. In a particle diagram, atoms are represented by a single coloured circle. When atoms of two or more elements bond together, they make a compound. These clusters of strongly bonded atoms are called molecules. See how they're represented by two circles of different size and colour that are joined together. This particle diagram represents water or, to use its chemical formula, H₂O which is a compound of the elements hydrogen and oxygen.

Mike Long: Highly dopaminergic people are easily distracted in many cases. They see something. They want to know what it is. And so, there are a lot of more random things that — I'm speaking in broad terms here. Buyer’s remorse is the failure of the H&N experience to compensate for the loss of dopaminergic arousal. There are interesting facts about the difference between people who are very liberal or very conservative. Those who are very liberal tend to be more intelligent than conservatives and they also tend to be more likely to cheat on their spouse in a relationship. They also tend to be more committed to supporting humanity rather than man itself and are much more focused on the bigger picture but conservatives tend to be kinder to friends, more family orientated, dislike change and give larger amounts in regards to charity donations - though this will be more likely to be local causes than worldwide. We make up models of the world to try and understand how the world works and those models are created by the hormones in our body such as dopamine that create how we perceive everything and feel. So sometimes we have to adapt the model of the world that we've created and change it into something else which is something we could do with something like CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) and other approaches. Dopamine responded not to reward, but to reward prediction error: the actual reward minus the expected reward.And the experience is that it actually diminishes free will. It does not take it away completely. People still have a choice, but it makes making the right choice so much more difficult because we, we respond to the biological activity of our brain and dopamine is very, very powerful in that respect. Let's say you're walking down the street and you see a pebble lying in a puddle. You're probably not going to think anything of it. But, if a highly dopaminergic poet is walking down the street and sees that same pebble, he may feel that that pebble is speaking to him in a very deep way that that pebble is revealing something about humanity and the world. He may even feel like that that pebble somehow reveals the hidden divinity of the world. And he may go on write a very beautiful poem about that that inspires dozens of people.

Mental time travel is a powerful tool of the dopamine system. It allows us to experience a possible, though presently unreal, future as if we were there.

Drawing ionic bonds

So, from an evolutionary point of view, it's incredibly important. And that's why it's so powerful because it directs our behavior from the bottom up. It's designed to keep us alive and make us evolutionarily successful. Alternatively, someone with a highly active control circuit might be cold and calculating, ruthless and devoid of emotion.

When it comes to love, the loss of passionate romance will always happen eventually, and then comes a choice. Presenter: Wow, teeny tiny. Well, is there a way to help us visualise atoms to help us learn about them? Our authors mirror all of this research with a study done on happiness, in which they found that people were less happy when their mind was wandering. “It didn’t matter what the activity was. Whether they were eating, working, watching TV, or socializing, they were happier if they were paying attention to what they were doing.” Especially with the rise of social media platforms, a lot of time spent mentally wandering is time spent comparing yourself to others who probably have more of what you want (or what you think you want). These platforms, and our cell phones in general, are the most addicting things ever invented—every ping triggers our dopamine receptors. The researchers concluded that “a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.” Living in the moment makes a human happy, as does appreciating what you already have and doing your best not to pine for more. Turns out all of those spiritual gurus really are on to something! Daniel Lieberman: Yeah, it can do that. It can make us obsessed with our work and take us away from a personal life. And, of course, a work-life balance is very important, and dopamine can ruin that balance. But, it can also prevent us from getting satisfaction from what we're working for so hard. It's never enough. I saw a patient today who an incredibly successful real estate developer is, and he has more money than he will ever be able to spend and through his life, he's achieved higher and higher and higher levels. But, every time he takes a step, he starts comparing himself to the person at the higher level. And his self-esteem is terrible, in spite of all of his achievements. In spite of having a wonderful family, he constantly sees himself as a failure because he's always looking for what he has not yet achieved. And then that's a pathological behavior of dopamine. Utilitarianism says we should act to save lives. These are both very, very valid ways of approaching a problem. But, what's interesting is that depending on the location in three-dimensional space, our brain uses different circuits to process the problem, and we come up with different solutions.

Daniel Lieberman: That's right. People say, look, I know my son is a good person and somehow, he got trapped in this web. Therefore, maybe I was wrong. Maybe this really is something besides a moral failing. Daniel Lieberman: Now he sees the pebble, and instead of metaphorically speaking to him, it's really speaking to him. Instead of revealing divinity of the world, it reveals the fact that he himself is God. Now we've tipped over into mental illness, so having a lot of dopamine can be a very good thing — can be a very exciting thing. But, if you have too much, you get a break with reality. Full Book Name: 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