back to indexHow to Increase Motivation & Drive | Huberman Lab Podcast #12
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Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
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where we discuss science and science-based tools
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for everyday life.
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I'm Andrew Huberman,
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and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology
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at Stanford School of Medicine.
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This podcast is separate from my teaching
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and research roles at Stanford.
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It is, however, part of my desire and effort
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to bring you zero cost to consumer information
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about science and science-related tools.
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Along those lines,
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I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
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Our first sponsor is Athletic Greens.
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Athletic Greens is an all-in-one
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vitamin mineral probiotic drink.
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I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012,
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and so I'm delighted that they're a sponsor of the podcast.
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The reason I started taking Athletic Greens
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is because I found it rather dizzying
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to know which vitamins and minerals to take,
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and Athletic Greens covers all my bases
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for vitamins and minerals.
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It also includes probiotics,
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and there are now a lot of data supporting the fact
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that probiotics are important for the gut brain access,
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for immunity, for metabolic health, endocrine health,
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many, many things.
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So I take Athletic Greens once, sometimes twice a day.
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I mix it with water and a little bit of lemon juice,
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and to me, it tastes delicious.
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If you'd like to try Athletic Greens,
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you can go to athleticgreens.com slash Huberman,
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and if you do that,
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they'll also give you a year's supply of vitamin D3K2.
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There are a lot of data now showing
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that vitamin D3 is important for immune function
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and a number of other important biological processes.
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In addition, if you go to athleticgreens.com slash Huberman,
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you'll get five free travel packs.
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Travel packs make it easy to mix up Athletic Greens
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when you're in the car, on the plane,
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or generally on the road.
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So that's athleticgreens.com to get Athletic Greens,
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the year's supply of vitamin D3 and K2,
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and the five free travel packs.
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Our second sponsor of today's podcast is Headspace.
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Headspace is a meditation app that makes meditation easy.
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I've been meditating on and off since I was 16 years old.
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I'm 45 now, so that's about 30 years
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of on and off meditation,
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and I confess most of that time, it was off,
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meaning I find it really hard
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to stick to a meditation practice.
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A few years ago, I discovered Headspace
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while flying on JetBlue flights,
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because at that time, they were offering Headspace
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as something you could watch instead of TV or movies,
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and it made me feel great.
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I'd find that I arrived where I was going,
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more rested, more relaxed, and I got the Headspace app,
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and I started using it daily,
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and I've continued to use it daily.
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Headspace has a large number of meditations,
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all supported by science.
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There's also now just a tremendous amount of science
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supporting a meditation practice for all sorts of things,
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like improved sleep, reduced impulsivity,
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improved cognition.
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They're just a myriad of positive effects of meditation.
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The hardest thing is doing it, and Headspace makes that easy.
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If you want to try the Headspace app
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and all the meditations they have,
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you can go to headspace.com slash special offer,
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and you'll get one month completely free
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of all the meditations they have.
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That's headspace.com slash special offer
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to get one month free of Headspace.
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The third sponsor of today's podcast is Magic Spoon.
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Magic Spoon is a low carb, grain-free, keto-friendly cereal.
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As I've mentioned a few times before on this podcast,
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the way I eat throughout the day has everything to do
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with when I want to be alert and when I want to be sleepy.
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So in the first part of the day, I fast,
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because that enhances alertness.
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So my lunch and my afternoon meals are ketogenic.
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And then in the evening, I eat starches and vegetables
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because those aid the transition to sleep.
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So for me, Magic Spoon as a keto cereal is a great snack.
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It's really tasty.
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I don't actually mix mine with milk.
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I just eat it directly.
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They have a bunch of different flavors.
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I like the frosted flavor,
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also because it tastes like donuts,
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and I have a pastry affliction, and I love pastries.
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So Magic Spoon allows me to remain on keto during the day.
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It's healthy. It tastes great.
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I really enjoy it.
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So if you want to try Magic Spoon,
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you can go to magicspoon.com slash Huberman
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for a variety pack of different flavors.
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And if you put Huberman at checkout,
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you'll get $5 off the variety pack.
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That's magicspoon.com slash Huberman
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to try a variety pack of different flavors
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of Magic Spoon keto, grain-free, low carb cereal.
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Put Huberman at checkout, you get $5 off.
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A quick note before we begin today's discussion
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about the neuroscience of motivation.
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I'm pleased to announce that we have now captioned
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episodes one and two in Spanish,
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and soon all the episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast
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will be captioned on YouTube in Spanish.
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We've used some of the revenue from the podcast
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to hire expert captioners, so it should be accurate.
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You might catch a mistake here or there,
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or a dialect difference from time to time,
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but by our read and by our experts' reads,
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it's all accurate.
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So we're very pleased that people who speak Spanish
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and digest information best in Spanish
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can now digest the information here on the podcast.
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Thanks to everyone for supporting the podcast,
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which allows us to broaden our reach in these ways.
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And we do hope to expand to other languages
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in the very near future.
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This month, we're talking all about
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the neuroscience of emotions.
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And today we're going to talk about
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an extremely important topic
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that's central to our daily life, and that's motivation.
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We're going to talk about pleasure and reward.
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What underlies our sense of pleasure or reward?
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We're going to talk about addictions.
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You can't have a discussion about pleasure and reward
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without having a discussion about addictions
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and the addictive properties of certain substances,
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as well as how to break free of addiction.
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As well, we're going to talk about the neurochemistry
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of drive and mindset.
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So all these themes are woven together
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in the context of emotions.
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Each one of them, of course,
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could also be its own entire month of the podcast.
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And in fact, we are going to have
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an entire month devoted to addiction.
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And I have a very special guest
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that's going to be joining us to talk about
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the science and clinical practices
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that we know are important for understanding
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and treating addiction.
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But for now, let's just talk about
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the neuroscience of motivation and reward,
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of pleasure and pain,
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because those are central to what we think of as emotions,
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whether or not we feel good,
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whether or not we feel we're on track in life,
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whether or not we feel we're falling behind.
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So motivation is fundamental to our daily life.
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It's what allows us to get out of bed in the morning.
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It's what allows us to pursue long-term goals
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or short-term goals.
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Motivation and the chemistry of motivation
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is tightly wound in with the neurochemistry of movement.
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In fact, the same single molecule, dopamine,
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is responsible for our sense of motivation
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Even though nerves controlling muscles,
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so again, these are nerves in the spinal cord or brain
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that move our limbs,
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the effector chemical there,
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the one that actually causes the muscles to twitch,
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to contract, is acetylcholine.
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In the brain, acetylcholine is responsible for focus.
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However, whether or not we move,
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whether or not we want to move,
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whether or not we have the desire to overcome barriers of,
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you know, they could be social barriers
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or financial barriers or time constraints,
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that depends on this molecule we call dopamine.
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It's a fascinating molecule,
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and it lies at the center of so many great things in life,
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and it lies at the center of so many terrible aspects
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of life, namely addiction and certain forms
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of mental disease.
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So if ever there was a double-edged blade
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in the world of neuroscience, it's dopamine.
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So let's talk about what dopamine is,
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and as always, we are going to talk about actionable tools.
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Today, we're definitely going to talk about some things
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related to supplementation,
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although you might be surprised to learn
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that it's not all just about increasing dopamine,
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and in particular, in some cases,
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that's the wrong thing to do.
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Sometimes it's appropriate, sometimes it's not.
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More so, we're going to talk about tools
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related to what's called dopamine scheduling,
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how the way that you're leading your life
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and the way that you're conceptualizing your goals
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can actually predict whether or not
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you're going to continue to pursue those goals,
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and therefore, whether or not you will succeed
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in achieving those goals,
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as well as whether or not you will quit.
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There's a fundamental relationship
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between dopamine released in your brain
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and your desire to exert effort,
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and you can actually control the schedule
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of dopamine release,
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but it requires the appropriate knowledge.
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This is one of those cases where understanding
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the way the dopamine system works
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will allow you to leverage it to your benefit,
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and if you don't understand the way that dopamine works,
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there's a good chance that it's going to pull you out
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into the current of life,
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meaning the rest of the world
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is going to control your dopamine schedules.
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So I'm excited to tell you about today's information.
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You're going to learn some basic science.
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You're going to learn a lot of tools,
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and these tools, I believe, are applicable
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whether or not you're five years old, eight years old,
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80 years old, or anything in between.
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So let's talk about dopamine.
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Let's get a few basic facts on the table.
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Dopamine was discovered in the late 1950s,
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and it was discovered as the precursor,
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meaning the thing from which epinephrine
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or adrenaline is made.
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Now, that's fundamentally important
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because this molecule we call dopamine nowadays
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we think of as the molecule of reward and pleasure,
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but actually it is the substrate
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from which adrenaline is made,
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it's the substrate from which epinephrine is made.
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Epinephrine is the same thing as adrenaline,
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except in the brain we call it epinephrine.
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Epinephrine, as you may recall from previous podcasts,
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or if you haven't, no problem,
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epinephrine allows us to get into action.
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It stimulates changes in the blood vessels,
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in the heart, in the organs and tissues of the body
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that bias us for movement,
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and if you'd like to learn more about epinephrine,
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you can check out our episode on mastering stress.
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We talk a lot about it there.
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Dopamine was initially thought to be
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just the building block for epinephrine,
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and it is indeed the chemical building block
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from which epinephrine is made.
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However, dopamine does a lot of things on its own.
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It's not always converted to epinephrine.
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Dopamine is released from several sites
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in the brain and body,
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but perhaps the most important one for today's discussion
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about motivation and reward
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is something that's sometimes just called the reward pathway
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for the aficionados,
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it's sometimes called the mesolimbic reward pathway,
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but it's fundamentally important
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to your desire to engage in action,
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and it's fundamentally important
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for people getting addicted to substances or behaviors.
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So how does this work?
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Well, you've got a structure in the deep part of your brain
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called the VTA, it stands for ventral tegmental area.
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As always, you don't have to remember these names,
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but if you want to, I offer them to you
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for further Googling, research, reading, et cetera.
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The VTA or ventral tegmental area contains neurons
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that send what we call axons, little wires,
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that spit out dopamine at a different structure
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called the nucleus accumbens.
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And those two structures, VTA and nucleus accumbens,
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form really the core machinery of the reward pathway
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and the pathway that controls your motivation for anything.
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You can think of them like an accelerator,
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they bias you for action.
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However, within the reward pathway, there's also a break.
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The break or restriction on that dopamine,
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which controls when it's released
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and how much it's released is the prefrontal cortex.
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The prefrontal cortex is the neural real estate
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right behind your forehead.
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It's discussed for so many aspects of neuroscience,
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you hear about it for decision-making, executive function,
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for planning, et cetera.
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And indeed it's responsible for a lot of those.
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It's this really unique real estate
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that we were all endowed with as humans.
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Other animals don't have much of it, we have a lot of it.
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And that prefrontal cortex acts as a break
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on the dopamine system.
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Without that break, you would be purely a pleasure
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You would be purely pleasure seeking.
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You would have no basis for regulating your behavior
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in terms of trying to get things that make you feel good.
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And that brings us to the important feature of motivation,
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which is that motivation is a two-part process,
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which is about balancing pleasure and pain, okay?
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Most people think about motivation and reward and dopamine
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as just trying to achieve pleasure.
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And indeed dopamine is released in the brain from the VTA
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at the nucleus accumbens
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when we experience things that we like.
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So here's the way to conceptualize this.
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And if you can internalize this in your mind,
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it will really help you as you move through your day
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trying to understand why you might be motivated
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or not motivated for certain things.
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So when you're just sitting around
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not doing much of anything,
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maybe you wake up in bed in the morning,
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you're thinking about getting up or not,
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this reward pathway is releasing dopamine
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at a rate of about three or four times per second.
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It's kind of firing at a low level.
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When I say firing, I mean electrical activity in the neurons.
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So when you're just around, you feel okay, not depressed,
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not highly motivated, not excited,
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maybe three or four times a second.
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If suddenly you get excited about something,
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you anticipate something, not receive an award,
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but you get excited in an anticipatory way,
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then the rate of firing, the rate of activity
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in this reward pathway suddenly increases
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to like 30 or 40 times.
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And it has the effect of creating a sense of action
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or desire to move in the direction
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of the thing that you're craving.
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In fact, it's fair to say that dopamine is responsible
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for wanting and for craving.
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And that's distinctly different
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from the way that you hear it talked about normally,
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which is that it's involved in pleasure.
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So yes, dopamine is released in response to sex.
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It's released in response to food.
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It's released in response to a lot of things,
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but it's mostly released in anticipation
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and craving for a particular thing.
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It has the effect of narrowing our focus
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for the thing that we crave.
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And that thing could be as simple as a cup of coffee.
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It could be as important as a big board meeting.
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It could be a big final exam.
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It could be the person that we're excited to meet or see.
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Dopamine doesn't care about what you're craving.
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It just releases at a particular rate.
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In fact, if we just take a step back
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and we look at the scientific data
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on how much the dopamine firing increases
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in response to different things,
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you get a pretty interesting window
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into how your brain works
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and why you might be motivated or not motivated.
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Let's say you're hungry
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or you're looking forward to a cup of coffee
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or you're going to see your partner.
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Well, your dopamine neurons are firing at a low rate
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until you start thinking about the thing that you want
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or the thing that you're looking forward to.
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Let's say you're craving chocolate or a good meal,
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steak if you like steak
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or a nice plate of pasta if you like pasta.
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When you eat that food,
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the amount of dopamine that's released
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in this reward pathway goes up about 50% above baseline.
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The neurons there go from firing
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three or four times per second
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to six or 10 times per second.
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It really depends and these aren't exact numbers
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but if we were to measure
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the amount of dopamine that's released,
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it goes up about 50%, all right?
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Sex, which is fundamental to our species continuation
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although it doesn't have to be for conceiving children,
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sex does release dopamine
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and it increases dopamine levels about 100%.
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So basically doubles them.
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Nicotine of the sort that's in cigarettes
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or some people are taking nicotine in supplemental form
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increases the amount of dopamine about 150% above baseline.
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It also does some other things that we're going to talk about
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but nicotine does that
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and it's kind of interesting that nicotine
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would increase the amount of dopamine in your brain
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very quickly within seconds.
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That's 150 times over baseline
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as opposed to sex which is 100% above
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or food which is 50%.
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Cocaine and amphetamine increase the amount of dopamine
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that's released a thousand fold
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within about 10 seconds of consuming the drug.
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However, just thinking about food, about sex,
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about nicotine if you like nicotine
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or cocaine or amphetamine
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can increase the amount of dopamine that's released
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to the same degree as actually consuming the drug.
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Now it depends, in some cases for instance,
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the cocaine user, the addict that wants cocaine
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can't just think about cocaine
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and increase the amount that's released about a thousand fold
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it's actually much lower
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but it's just enough to put them on the motivation track
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for it to crave that particular thing.
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Now there are reasons why
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you would have brain circuitry like this.
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I mean, brain circuitry like this
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didn't evolve to get you addicted.
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Brain circuitry like this evolved
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in order to motivate behaviors toward particular goals,
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water when you're thirsty, sex in order to reproduce.
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And we're going to talk about the relationship
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between estrogen and testosterone in the dopamine system
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because those hormones actually bias dopamine to be released.
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These things and these brain areas and neurons
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were part of the evolutionary history
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that led to the continuation of our species.
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Things like cocaine and amphetamine
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are disastrous for most people
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because they release so much dopamine
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and they create these closed loops
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where people then only crave the particular thing,
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cocaine and amphetamine
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that leads to those massive amounts of dopamine release.
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Most things don't release that level of dopamine.
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Nowadays, there's a ton of interest in social media
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and in video games.
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And there have been some measurements
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of the amount of dopamine released.
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Video games, especially video games
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that have a very high update speed
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where there's novel territory all the time.
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Novelty is a big stimulus of dopamine.
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Those can release dopamine
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somewhere between nicotine and cocaine.
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So very high levels of dopamine release.
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Social media is an interesting one
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because the amount of dopamine
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that's released in response to logging onto social media
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initially could be quite high,
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but it seems like likely
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that there's a taper in the amount of dopamine
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and yet people still get addicted.
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Why is it that we can get addicted to things
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that fail to elicit the same massive amount of pleasure
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that they initially did?
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Being addicted to something isn't just about
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the fact that it feels so good
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that you want to do it over and over again.
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And that's because of this pleasure pain balance
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that underlies motivation.
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So let's look a little bit closer
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at the pleasure pain balance
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because therein lies the tools
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for you to be able to control motivation
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toward healthy things and avoid motivated behaviors
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towards things that are destructive for you.
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There are a lot of reasons why people try novel behaviors,
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whether or not those are drugs
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or whether or not those are adventure thrill-seeking things
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or they seek out new partners or they take a new class.
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As you'll notice, I'm not placing any judgment
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or value on these different behaviors.
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Although I think it's fair to point out that
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for most people, addictive drugs like cocaine
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and amphetamine are very destructive.
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Actually, we know that about 15 to 20% of people
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have a genetic bias towards addiction
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that you sometimes hear that the first time
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that you use a drug, you can become addicted to it.
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That's actually not been shown to be true
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for most things and most people,
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but for some people that actually is true.
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And we'll talk a little bit later
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about why certain people are heavily biased
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toward becoming addicts on the first use
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of a particular drug.
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It's actually very interesting.
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It has everything to do with whether or not
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they were formally addicted to something else.
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But in any case, the way that addiction works
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and the way that motivation works generally
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in the non-addictive setting
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is that when you anticipate something,
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a little bit of dopamine is released.
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And then when you reach that thing,
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you engage in that thing,
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the amount of dopamine goes up even further.
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But as you repeatedly pursue a behavior
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and you repeatedly engage with a particular thing,
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let's say you love running or you love chocolate.
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As you eat a piece of chocolate,
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believe it or not, it tastes good.
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And then there's a shift away from activation of dopamine.
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And there are other chemicals that are released
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that trigger a low level sense of pain.
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Now you might not feel it as physical pain,
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but the craving that you feel is both one part dopamine
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and one part the mirror image of dopamine,
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which is the pain or the craving
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for yet another piece of chocolate.
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And this is a very important and subtle feature
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of the dopamine system that's not often discussed.
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People always talk about it just as pleasure.
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You love social media, so it gives you dopamine.
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And so you engage in that.
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You like chocolate, it releases dopamine, so you do that.
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But for every bit of dopamine that's released,
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there's another circuit in the brain that creates,
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you can think of it as kind of like
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a downward deflection in pleasure.
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So you engage in something you really want,
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and there's an increase in pleasure.
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And then there's a, without you doing anything,
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there's a mirror image of that,
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which is a downward deflection in pleasure,
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which we're calling pain.
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So for every bit of pleasure,
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there is a mirror image experience of pain.
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And they overlap in time very closely.
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So it's sometimes hard to sense this, but try it.
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The next time you eat something really delicious,
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you'll take a bite, it tastes delicious.
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And part of the experience is to want more of that thing.
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This is true for any pleasureful experience.
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Now, the diabolical part about dopamine
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is that because it didn't evolve
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in order to get you to indulge
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in more and more and more of something,
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what happens is that initially,
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you experience an increase in pleasure,
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and you also experience this increase in pain shortly after
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or woven in with the pleasure
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that makes you want more of that thing.
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But with each subsequent time
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that you encounter that thing,
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that you pursue the chocolate,
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that you pursue the lover,
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each time the experience of dopamine release and pleasure
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is diminished a little bit.
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And the diabolical thing is that the pain response
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is increased a little bit.
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And this is best observed
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in the context of drug-seeking behavior.
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The first time someone decides to take cocaine or amphetamine,
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they may do it out of boredom.
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They may do it out of peer pressure.
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They may do it to relieve some internal sense.
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Maybe they're bored or they're just excited.
link |
Maybe they're high in novelty seeking.
link |
There are a lot of reasons why people might try a drug,
link |
far too many for us to get into or parse here.
link |
Maybe they don't even want to do it,
link |
but someone encourages them.
link |
They will experience a huge dopamine release
link |
and they will feel likely very good.
link |
However, the next time they take it,
link |
it won't feel quite as good.
link |
And it won't feel even as good
link |
the third time or the next time.
link |
But the amount of pain, the amount of craving
link |
that they experience for the drug will increase over time.
link |
So much of our pursuit of pleasure
link |
is simply to reduce the pain of craving.
link |
So the next time you experience something you really like,
link |
I don't want to take you out of that experience,
link |
but it's really important that you notice this,
link |
that if there's something you really enjoy,
link |
part of that enjoyment is about the anticipation
link |
and wanting of more of that thing.
link |
And that's the pain system in action.
link |
And so we can distinguish between dopamine,
link |
which is really about pleasure and dopamine,
link |
which is really about motivation to pursue more
link |
in order to relieve or exclude future pain.
link |
Let me repeat that.
link |
Dopamine isn't as much about pleasure
link |
as much as it is about motivation and desire to pursue more
link |
in order to reduce the amount of pain.
link |
And we are now talking about pain as a psychological pain
link |
and a craving, although people
link |
that miss a lover very badly
link |
or that really crave a food very badly
link |
or that are addicted to a drug and can't access it
link |
will experience that as a physical craving
link |
and a mental craving.
link |
The body and brain are linked in this way.
link |
It's almost, they'll describe it as painful.
link |
They yearn for it.
link |
And I think the word yearning
link |
is one that's very valuable in this context
link |
because yearning seems to include a whole body experience
link |
more than just wanting, which could just be up in the mind.
link |
So your desire for something is proportional
link |
to how pleasureful it is to indulge in that thing,
link |
but also how much pain you experience
link |
when you don't have it.
link |
And you can now start to let your mind wander
link |
into all sorts of examples of addictions
link |
or things that you happen to like.
link |
I'll use the example that I sometimes use on here,
link |
which is my love of croissants,
link |
although several of you pointed out
link |
these are called croissants,
link |
but then it sounds like I'm trying to speak French
link |
and I always tried to do that when I was a kid
link |
and I went to a bilingual school and it failed then,
link |
and it's going to fail now.
link |
So I'm going to call them croissants.
link |
They're delicious.
link |
A really good one makes me want to eat six.
link |
I have pretty good impulse control, I think,
link |
but it makes me want to eat six.
link |
I taste it and it tastes so delicious.
link |
And unless I really force myself
link |
to experience the taste of it in my mouth
link |
and how flaky I'm getting hungry for it right now
link |
and delicious the croissant is,
link |
mostly the taste of that croissant
link |
makes me want to eat more croissants.
link |
Now, eventually blood sugar goes up,
link |
satiety is reached, et cetera.
link |
What happens then?
link |
What is satisfaction and satiety about?
link |
Well, that's a separate neuromodulator.
link |
That's about the neuromodulator serotonin.
link |
It's about oxytocin.
link |
It's about a hormone system
link |
that involves something called prolactin.
link |
So we're going to talk about all of those
link |
in the book, The Molecule of More, wonderful book.
link |
Those were described as the here and now molecules,
link |
the ones that allow you to experience your sensations
link |
and pleasure in the present
link |
and for which the brain stops projecting into the future.
link |
So now let's talk about craving
link |
and these so-called here and now molecules
link |
and how those engage in a kind of push-pull balance
link |
that will allow you to not just feel more motivated
link |
but also to enjoy the things in life
link |
that you are pursuing to a much greater degree.
link |
We have neurons in an area of our brain
link |
called the raphe, R-A-P-H-E.
link |
The raphe releases serotonin
link |
at different places in the brain.
link |
Serotonin is the molecule of bliss and contentment
link |
for what you already have.
link |
I've talked before about exteroception.
link |
Exteroception is a focus on the outside world,
link |
everything beyond the confines of your skin.
link |
We've also talked about interoception,
link |
a focus on things that are happening internally
link |
within the confines of your skin.
link |
Dopamine and serotonin can be thought of
link |
as related to exteroception.
link |
Dopamine makes us focused on things outside us
link |
that are beyond what we call our personal space
link |
where we actually have to move and take action
link |
in order to achieve things.
link |
And serotonin in general has to do with the things
link |
that are in our immediate here and now,
link |
hence the description of these
link |
as the here and now molecules.
link |
So it's interesting to point out that the body
link |
and the brain can direct its attention
link |
towards things outside us or inside us
link |
or split our attention between those.
link |
I talked about this in a previous podcast,
link |
but if you didn't see it, no problem.
link |
Just understand that dopamine biases us
link |
toward thinking about what we don't have.
link |
Whereas serotonin and some of the related molecules
link |
like the endocannabinoids,
link |
if you picked up on the word cannabinoid,
link |
yes, it's like cannabis
link |
because cannabis attaches to endocannabinoid receptors.
link |
And the endocannabinoids are receptors and chemicals
link |
that the cannabinoids that you naturally make
link |
that are involved in things like forgetting.
link |
It's not a coincidence that pot smokers
link |
don't have the most terrific memory.
link |
You may know a few that have great memories,
link |
but chances are they would have even better memories
link |
if they weren't pot smokers.
link |
But you make these molecules that bind to these receptors
link |
that make you feel kind of blissed out
link |
and content in the present.
link |
Those are receptors that exist in us
link |
not for sake of consuming THC or marijuana,
link |
but for sake of binding of our natural endogenous cannabinoids.
link |
So you've got these two systems.
link |
They're kind of like a push-pull.
link |
And if you were to say, do the,
link |
in the book, wherever you go, there you are,
link |
Jon Kabat-Zinn talks about this meditation practice
link |
that's different than most meditation practices
link |
where you eat one almond
link |
and you focus all of your attention on the almond,
link |
the taste of the almond, the texture of the almond.
link |
That's really a mindfulness practice
link |
that's geared towards trying to take a behavior
link |
which is normally about pursuit.
link |
Normally feeding is we're going,
link |
we engage in feeding because of dopamine.
link |
We pursue more of a food
link |
because of that pleasure pain relationship
link |
I talked about before.
link |
The focus on the one almond
link |
or becoming very present in any behavior
link |
that normally would be a kind of
link |
exteroceptive pursuit behavior
link |
and bring it into the here and now,
link |
that's a mental trick or a mental task
link |
that the mindfulness community has really embraced
link |
in order to try and create increased pleasure
link |
for what you already have.
link |
It's really trying to accomplish a shift
link |
from dopamine being released
link |
to serotonin and the cannabinoid system
link |
being involved in that behavior.
link |
So if you're interested in mindfulness
link |
which is something I've talked about before in this podcast
link |
and I sort of made some off the cuff jokes
link |
about the opposite of mindfulness being mindlessness.
link |
Mindfulness is a vast space.
link |
That is a mindful practice
link |
that a lot of people have engaged in.
link |
And indeed it can give you deeper appreciation
link |
for things that you already have.
link |
Dopamine has the quality of making people
link |
kind of rabidly in pursuit of things.
link |
Look at people who are high on cocaine or amphetamine
link |
and they are almost entirely exteroceptive.
link |
Drugs like marijuana, the opioids,
link |
anything that really hits the serotonin system hard
link |
tend to make people rather lethargic
link |
and content to stay exactly where they are.
link |
They don't want to pursue much at all.
link |
Occasionally when people smoke marijuana
link |
or consume THC, their appetite goes way up
link |
and they really want to consume food.
link |
That's because of its effects on insulin
link |
and its effects on blood sugar
link |
which is a slightly separate matter.
link |
But since some of you probably your minds
link |
might've gone to those either experiences
link |
or reports of what pot does, that's why it does that.
link |
So you've got these molecules like dopamine
link |
that make you focused on the things you want
link |
and the things you crave.
link |
And then you've got the molecules
link |
that make you content with what you have.
link |
So the most important thing perhaps
link |
in creating a healthy emotional landscape
link |
is to have a balance
link |
between these two neuromodulator systems.
link |
People that are always in anticipation
link |
and desire and seeking,
link |
that's wonderful for pursuing goals.
link |
However, it's terrible for enjoying life.
link |
And actually those people
link |
are actually quite difficult to be around.
link |
There's a certain almost sociopathic element
link |
to people who are what they call hyper dopaminergic.
link |
People who are always on the dopaminergic scale
link |
to the point where they are always pursuing goals.
link |
In fact, those people are known to be
link |
at least in the psychological spectrum,
link |
they can be very manipulative.
link |
Dopamine and the pursuit of something
link |
doesn't necessarily have to be high energy
link |
and intense from the outside
link |
when you observe it from the outside.
link |
In fact, there are people who will manipulate
link |
in order to get what they want.
link |
This has been shown
link |
who have high levels of dopamine release in their brain
link |
but they've learned that a kind of passive manipulation
link |
is the best way to maneuver through a particular environment.
link |
I don't want to focus too much on sociopathy
link |
because those are kind of extreme examples
link |
but it just goes to show that people who identify a goal
link |
and realize the series of steps that they need to take
link |
in order to achieve that goal
link |
can either do it through ethical means or non-ethical means.
link |
They can do it through active pursuit
link |
being the kind of type A person
link |
that's always declaring their goals
link |
and going after it, posting it on Instagram,
link |
telling everybody about it, trying to recruit others.
link |
There's that phenotype.
link |
There's that kind of signature of dopamine.
link |
And then there are the people
link |
that want to get what they want
link |
and they're doing it by always serving other people,
link |
by always taking care of everybody else's needs,
link |
by always trying to accomplish their goals
link |
but through a mode that at least from the outside
link |
seems more passive or more about supporting others.
link |
Neither of these are good or bad
link |
and that's because dopamine is a molecule.
link |
It doesn't care how you reach your goals.
link |
It only cares that you reach your goals
link |
because the internal sensation is one again
link |
of mild pleasure, a little bit of pain,
link |
although more pain over time
link |
if you're not reaching those goals
link |
and it takes you away from the here and now.
link |
So at about this point in the podcast,
link |
I'm guessing that some of you are thinking,
link |
okay, great, I want more dopamine.
link |
I want to be more motivated.
link |
I don't want to procrastinate as much
link |
and I want to be able to experience life.
link |
I want these here and now molecules to be released as well.
link |
Well, there is a way to do that
link |
but you have to understand the source of procrastination
link |
There are basically two kinds of procrastinators
link |
or so says the research.
link |
The first kind are people that actually really enjoy
link |
the stress of the impending deadline.
link |
It's the only way they can get into action.
link |
These are people that really like the feeling of
link |
something being due in an hour
link |
and how activated and sharp and focused
link |
that makes them feel.
link |
Those people are people that are tapping into
link |
the epinephrine system, the stress system
link |
and for which the stress really tightens their ability
link |
to see, it creates that soda straw view of the world.
link |
It creates an action element in the body
link |
that makes them feel like they want to move.
link |
It really eliminates all the distractions for them.
link |
So they're actually leveraging stress, internal stress
link |
in order to achieve a state
link |
that they can't seem to otherwise achieve.
link |
I won't tell you what to do in order to overcome
link |
all kinds of procrastination,
link |
but from a logical perspective, it makes sense therefore
link |
for those kinds of people to think about other ways
link |
that they can get their system into activation.
link |
I've talked about this in previous podcasts
link |
but a couple of those tools might be
link |
the what we call super oxygenation breathing
link |
which I admit is not always super oxygenating.
link |
So this would be, if you didn't want to consume anything
link |
this could be 25 or 30 cycles of in deep inhales and exhales
link |
it's likely to create some anxiety and low level stress.
link |
If you're someone who's prone to panic attacks
link |
I wouldn't recommend this, but it's pretty straightforward.
link |
It will deploy adrenaline into your system
link |
and you will find that your visual field is focused
link |
and you will be able to work and focus better
link |
than if you just kind of waited around
link |
for some wave of motivation to wash over you.
link |
Normally you're waiting for that deadline to come into sight
link |
and then that's what the stimulus is.
link |
But you can self-direct adrenaline release
link |
without ingesting anything.
link |
You can also ingest coffee, caffeine, or mate
link |
or something like that
link |
which is what I prefer very often to coffee
link |
which has caffeine.
link |
Caffeine does release dopamine at low levels.
link |
How much it releases dopamine isn't clear.
link |
It seems to increase firing in these neurons
link |
in the nucleus accumbens by about 30%
link |
which is a pretty low level, but it can create agitation.
link |
So for caffeine sensitive people, that could be a problem.
link |
I've talked before about things like L-tyrosine
link |
the precursor to dopamine or macuna purines.
link |
I talked about that in the last episode
link |
but if you didn't see that, just to remind you
link |
L-tyrosine is present in red meats, it's in certain nuts
link |
and L-tyrosine is the precursor to dopamine.
link |
You can supplement L-tyrosine if you like
link |
you will get a big inflection in dopamine
link |
but there is a crash associated with it.
link |
However, it will increase motivation in the short term.
link |
Not suggesting anyone do this.
link |
I want to be very clear, say what I always say.
link |
I don't prescribe anything.
link |
You have to know whether or not these things are appropriate
link |
for your mental and physical health or not.
link |
So you need to consult a doctor.
link |
For instance, people who suffer
link |
from schizotypal or schizophrenia or mania
link |
should probably not be taking supplements
link |
that increase their dopamine levels.
link |
Now, if you can't increase your level of focus
link |
and your level of alertness and your level
link |
of motivation using breathing,
link |
well then there might be something else at play.
link |
There are other procrastinators
link |
for which they simply are not releasing enough dopamine.
link |
They're not making enough dopamine.
link |
And for those people, there are a variety of things
link |
that can increase dopamine.
link |
I do suggest you talk to a psychiatrist or doctor.
link |
I've talked about macuna purines
link |
which is 99.9% L-DOPA, the precursor to dopamine.
link |
So there are people that do much better
link |
when they take things that increase their dopamine levels.
link |
There are antidepressants like wellbutrin, bupryron
link |
which increase, is the other name for it,
link |
which increase dopamine and epinephrine.
link |
It can increase risk of epileptic attacks
link |
if you're epileptic.
link |
So again, you have to talk to your doctor
link |
but they will increase dopamine and motivation and focus.
link |
However, if you think back to our earlier discussion
link |
about dopamine, dopamine, if it's very high,
link |
creates a sense of pleasure and the desire for more.
link |
So you can also become a person
link |
for which enough is never enough.
link |
The only thing that dopamine really wants
link |
is more of the thing that releases dopamine.
link |
And so big inflections in dopamine,
link |
whether or not they come from cocaine
link |
or whether or not they come from a supplementation,
link |
caffeine exercise study regime
link |
will just make you want more of something.
link |
And we've all heard before of growth mindset,
link |
this incredible discovery of my colleague, Carol Dweck
link |
or some of these positive mindsets
link |
that the psychology community has put forth
link |
as really good for pursuit of goals
link |
and pursuit of things that require long bouts of effort.
link |
Well, it's wonderful if you can learn to attach dopamine
link |
to that process psychologically,
link |
but if you're starting to augment the amount of dopamine,
link |
increase the amount of dopamine
link |
through things like supplementation and prescription drugs,
link |
what's going to happen is
link |
you're not only going to need to pursue more and more
link |
of the sorts of things that are associated with the dopamine.
link |
So doing more studying, more sport, more pursuit,
link |
higher mountains, more money, more whatever.
link |
But we know that over time, the mirror image of that,
link |
the pain of lack of accomplishment will also increase.
link |
This is the pleasure pain relationship
link |
that we talked about earlier.
link |
So in a few moments, I'm going to talk about
link |
how to think about healthy dopamine schedules,
link |
but I just want to take a step back for a second
link |
and talk a little bit about the flip side of dopamine.
link |
What happens after this so-called dopamine crash?
link |
What mechanisms are installed in us?
link |
Because believe it or not,
link |
there are mechanisms that are installed in all of us
link |
that really put the complete and total brake on dopamine,
link |
why they're there and what they do,
link |
because you've experienced these before
link |
and there are actually ways that you can navigate them,
link |
these dopamine crashes
link |
or these intentional dopamine suppression mechanisms
link |
in order to leverage healthier dopamine schedules
link |
and to feel more motivated.
link |
Perhaps one of the most fundamental mechanisms in all humans
link |
is the neural circuitry designed for seeking out mates
link |
and for reproduction.
link |
And that's because the continuation of any one species
link |
is the primary driver for any species.
link |
That's just the reality.
link |
Now I'm removing all context here.
link |
So whatever I say, of course,
link |
it's on a backdrop of consensual, age appropriate,
link |
species appropriate, context appropriate, all of that.
link |
This is not about the sociology of reproduction in sex.
link |
This is about the biology.
link |
The biology of sex in males and females,
link |
it doesn't matter if it's XX chromosome, XY chromosome,
link |
XXY, XYY, doesn't matter.
link |
The reality is that dopamine is released on anticipation
link |
and consummation of sex and reproduction.
link |
And after orgasm, regardless of chromosomal background,
link |
there's a dramatic decrease in dopamine
link |
and an increase in a hormone called prolactin.
link |
Now prolactin is associated with milk letdown
link |
in lactating mothers.
link |
It's also present in males.
link |
And in general, prolactin creates a sense of lethargy,
link |
of stillness and lack of desire to move
link |
and lack of desire to pursue more
link |
of whatever released the dopamine.
link |
Prolactin in fact sets the refractory period
link |
on a male's ability to mate again.
link |
Now this is going to vary tremendously
link |
from individual to individual.
link |
It also can, there are data showing
link |
that it can vary tremendously
link |
from mate pairing to mate pairing.
link |
The number one thing that releases dopamine is novelty.
link |
And it is true that the refractory period is shortened
link |
by the introduction of novel mates.
link |
This was first shown in a kind of classic experiment
link |
of all things in chickens.
link |
This is called the Coolidge effect.
link |
And the story is, the story goes,
link |
and I believe it's a true story.
link |
It's actually in all the neuroendocrinology textbooks.
link |
So I believe it's true.
link |
Is that president Calvin Coolidge
link |
was visiting a chicken farm.
link |
They were being taken around
link |
and the person who was hosting the visit
link |
showed them a rooster,
link |
that was Coolidge and his wife were on the visit
link |
and said, this rooster copulates thousands of times per day.
link |
And Mrs. Coolidge apparently kind of elbowed
link |
president Coolidge and said, you hear that?
link |
Kind of like pointing out the prowess of this rooster
link |
and Coolidge said, yeah, but let me ask you a question.
link |
Same hen or different hens?
link |
It turns out it was different hens.
link |
And the reason is the introduction of a novel mate
link |
increases dopamine levels.
link |
And what's interesting about this
link |
is that after copulation,
link |
prolactin goes through the roof
link |
and prevents further copulation.
link |
But the introduction of some sort of novelty shortens this.
link |
Now, this is not a ploy for people to change mates often.
link |
What this is is a story about the dopamine
link |
and prolactin system that also exists in humans.
link |
Now there are actually things that people
link |
in certain communities take
link |
in order to bypass these refractory periods.
link |
There's actually drugs that increase dopamine,
link |
suppress prolactin and vice versa.
link |
There's actually another way to suppress prolactin.
link |
Vitamin B6 is a fairly potent prolactin inhibitor
link |
And if you look out there in the literature
link |
and for those of you that are in the wellness
link |
and kind of sports performance community,
link |
a lot of the so-called quote unquote testosterone boosters
link |
are actually combinations of vitamin B6 and zinc
link |
which inhibit prolactin
link |
and by way of inhibiting prolactin increase dopamine.
link |
So they do have some functional effect in that regard.
link |
They're not really increasing testosterone directly.
link |
They're suppressing prolactin levels.
link |
And there are clinical conditions like hyperprolactinemia
link |
which leads to massive decreases in libido, et cetera.
link |
And there are prescription drugs
link |
to treat hyperprolactinemia,
link |
which of course you should always talk
link |
to an endocrinologist
link |
about those sorts of prescription drugs.
link |
So it's interesting that this very basic mechanism
link |
of dopamine and prolactin,
link |
this sort of motivation, no, no more motivation,
link |
is a system that evolved for reproduction first
link |
but that actually takes place.
link |
And you can see elsewhere in the world.
link |
For instance, schizophrenia,
link |
a disease that has many different types and facets,
link |
but schizophrenia is a case of,
link |
often of hyperactivation of the dopamine system.
link |
So much so that it can make people feel kind of high,
link |
I mean, we're talking very, very high
link |
or dysregulated dopamine circuits in the brain.
link |
One of the treatments for schizophrenia
link |
are drugs that block dopamine receptors.
link |
And if you have the, it's unfortunate,
link |
there are so many people that are out on the street
link |
these days who have schizophrenia,
link |
some of whom are taking their meds, some of whom aren't.
link |
If you ever see somebody on the street
link |
that's doing what's, it's like a lip smacking and writhing,
link |
it's actually called tardive dyskinesia.
link |
This is a movement disorder
link |
that's created by taking these anti-dopaminergic drugs.
link |
So you can imagine these anti-dopaminergic drugs
link |
while being very effective in suppressing hallucinations,
link |
they create these movement problems
link |
because of dopamine's importance for the movement circuitry,
link |
so-called pyramidal circuitry for the aficionados.
link |
In addition, you sometimes see in males
link |
that take these drugs,
link |
drugs like haloperidol and the other dopamine blockers,
link |
that they actually develop breast tissue, gynecomastia.
link |
So the development of male breast tissue
link |
is because of the elevated levels of prolactin
link |
because they're suppressing their dopamine so much.
link |
Now that's a really extreme case,
link |
but maybe perhaps if you see somebody
link |
engaging in these very strange kind of face writhing
link |
and body writhing behaviors,
link |
that's actually not a consequence of their mental illness,
link |
that's a consequence most often of the drugs
link |
that they're taking to treat the mental illness,
link |
those are side effects of those drugs.
link |
Now prolactin is increased
link |
anytime we have some really heightened, intense experience.
link |
It's not just released after sex and reproduction.
link |
Prolactin is released after some major event.
link |
It's actually responsible,
link |
it's thought for some of postpartum depression
link |
for different types of kind of the letdown, the low.
link |
I can distinctly remember that after finals
link |
or after publishing a big paper,
link |
I would be very, very happy,
link |
but then I'd find that, oh, like what next?
link |
Or things might seem a little bit dimmed or dulled out
link |
for the next day or so, or the following week.
link |
The timescales on these are going to vary
link |
because some people release a lot of dopamine
link |
for a very long time in response to something great.
link |
And other people have a quick inflection of dopamine
link |
and then they're back to feeling not so great.
link |
It really varies from person to person.
link |
In fact, long ago,
link |
as I learned about dopamine reward circuitry
link |
and the relationship between dopamine and prolactin,
link |
I started to leverage this.
link |
Believe it or not, after some major event,
link |
I would take a couple hundred milligrams of vitamin B6.
link |
I think for people who have diabetic neuropathy,
link |
you need to be careful with vitamin B6,
link |
check with your doctor.
link |
I was told, although I haven't found the literature on this
link |
that it can, in some cases, exacerbate peripheral neuropathy.
link |
But for most people, it's thought to be reasonably safe,
link |
but again, always check with your physician.
link |
But I would take some B6 to kind of offset some of that low.
link |
And actually, I don't know if it was subjective or not,
link |
but it seemed to have somewhat of a positive effect.
link |
I also started just internalizing the fact
link |
that dopamine is so subjective.
link |
There are objective aspects to dopamine
link |
and how much is released,
link |
but there's also some subjective effects to dopamine.
link |
And so one of the things that you can do
link |
in order to generally just be a happier person,
link |
especially if you're a person in pursuit of long-term goals
link |
of any kind, is the longer that you can extend
link |
that positive phase of the dopamine release
link |
and the more that you can blunt the pain response to that,
link |
the better, and you can actually do this cognitively.
link |
I used to joke with my lab that when we'd publish a paper,
link |
I would get really excited,
link |
but I wouldn't allow myself to get too excited.
link |
What I wanted to do instead,
link |
and what I've still tried to do is try and extend the arc
link |
of that positive experience as long as I possibly can,
link |
simply by thinking back like, oh, that was really cool.
link |
I really enjoyed doing that work.
link |
I really enjoyed the discovery.
link |
I really enjoyed doing that with the people
link |
that I was working with at the time.
link |
What a pleasure that was.
link |
I can get this very easily from pictures of people
link |
and things like Costello that I really enjoy,
link |
trips that I've taken.
link |
So you can extend pleasure without having to engage
link |
in the behavior over and over.
link |
That's extending the arc of that dopamine release.
link |
As well, it offsets some of the pain
link |
of not having that experience occur
link |
over and over and over again.
link |
Now, for the high performers out there,
link |
you're probably familiar with this.
link |
Many people who have a big achievement,
link |
their first thoughts are, well, now what?
link |
What am I going to do next?
link |
How am I ever going to exceed that?
link |
And indeed, many people who are very high
link |
on this kind of dopamine sensation
link |
and novelty-seeking scale are prone to addiction.
link |
They're prone to the rabid pursuit of external goals,
link |
of exteroception, to the neglect of these internal mechanisms
link |
that allow them to feel calm and happy.
link |
So for people that are very driven, very motivated,
link |
adopting a practice of being able to engage
link |
in the here and now, the sort of almond-type practices
link |
we talked about earlier, of learning how to achieve
link |
a really good night's sleep on a regular basis
link |
through tools and mechanisms
link |
I talked about in previous podcasts,
link |
gives a sort of balance to the pleasure-seeking
link |
and offsetting of pain and the pleasure in the here and now.
link |
So pleasure is really two things.
link |
It's a joy in pursuit,
link |
but it's also the joy in what you have.
link |
And there's a beautiful model of emotional development
link |
that was developed by Alan Shore,
link |
a professor at UCLA and psychiatrist,
link |
that talks about some of the basics
link |
of good infant parent attachment,
link |
where good parenting that leads
link |
to healthy adult relationships and emotion regulation
link |
tends to include both sides
link |
of this dopamine serotonin spectrum.
link |
You talk about the relationship between child
link |
and parent typically was the mother, but also father,
link |
where you can get the child really excited
link |
by kind of squealing and ramping them up
link |
or talking about something or ice cream or play,
link |
and the kid gets very excited.
link |
That's the dopaminergic system,
link |
the anticipation of something that's coming,
link |
but as well engaging with children
link |
in a way that's really about everything
link |
that you have right in the here and now,
link |
the reading of the book,
link |
the kids always seem to ask one more time, one more,
link |
they seem to want more of the things that they enjoy,
link |
but really engaging with them
link |
in a way that increases their sense of pleasure
link |
for what's right there,
link |
as well as giving them a lot of things
link |
to be excited about and positive anticipation.
link |
Now, having worked years ago with at-risk kids
link |
and also with young kids at summer camps
link |
and things like that,
link |
one of the things that you learn
link |
is you never say maybe to a kid about a reward.
link |
If you say we might have ice cream later,
link |
you are essentially saying we are having ice cream.
link |
They don't hear the maybe part.
link |
And it turns out adults don't either.
link |
It's really interesting.
link |
There's something called reward prediction error.
link |
I've talked about this before,
link |
but I haven't really talked about it deeply
link |
in the context of the dopamine system.
link |
Dopamine, as I've said, is involved in anticipation
link |
of wanting, not of having.
link |
It's involved in motivation toward the thing that you want.
link |
And it biases us towards action.
link |
Reward prediction error equals the actual amount of dopamine
link |
that's released in response to something
link |
versus minus the amount that's expected, okay?
link |
So if you tell a kid we might have ice cream,
link |
they hear we're going to have ice cream and they expect it.
link |
And if you later say,
link |
well, we're not going to have ice cream,
link |
that's actually going to lead
link |
to a much bigger crash in dopamine.
link |
It's going to lead to a negative signal, a punishment signal.
link |
It's literally going to feel like pain.
link |
So kids, you can leverage this.
link |
If your parents say maybe,
link |
they're effectively telling your dopamine system absolutely.
link |
Now, adults are like this too.
link |
If we think something might happen and it doesn't happen,
link |
there's a big crash in our affect, in our emotionality.
link |
And that's because that dopamine system
link |
goes from firing about three to four times per second
link |
to about 10 or 15 times per second
link |
in the possibility that something might happen.
link |
Possibility is deeply woven into our biology
link |
of the dopamine and motivation system
link |
as a way for us presumably in ancient times
link |
to explore novel territories
link |
and get a sense that maybe there's water there.
link |
Maybe there are mates there.
link |
Maybe there's better food there.
link |
Maybe there's resources there.
link |
The maybe is an important thing that in language terms,
link |
maybe means maybe, but in neurobiological terms,
link |
maybe means perhaps there's going to be the surprise
link |
of an even bigger dopamine reward.
link |
And the one thing dopamine loves
link |
more than anything else is surprise.
link |
When we get something positive, we go to the mailbox,
link |
we're expecting some bills and you open it up
link |
and you get a letter from somebody
link |
you haven't thought about in a long time
link |
and you adore that person, that's a huge dopamine release.
link |
It actually triggers neuroplasticity.
link |
You probably never forget that
link |
because of the way that dopamine gates plasticity.
link |
When we get a surprise of something that we didn't want,
link |
also it creates plasticity.
link |
So the surprise, novelty, motivation and reward,
link |
they're all woven into this package that we call dopamine.
link |
And the cool thing is you can actually regulate
link |
this whole system in a way that will steer you
link |
or lean you towards more positive anticipation
link |
of things in life and less disappointment.
link |
It's simply a matter of adjusting
link |
what we call the dopamine schedule.
link |
Okay, a couple of things before we continue.
link |
We're going to talk about attention deficit
link |
in a few minutes, but before that,
link |
I want to talk about something
link |
that I've mentioned before in previous podcasts,
link |
but that you may not be aware of.
link |
And if you're aware of, you may still be doing,
link |
which is severely injuring your ability to release dopamine.
link |
It's creating a sense of disappointment
link |
in ways that are most likely hurting you
link |
mentally and physically.
link |
And that's the blunting of dopamine
link |
by viewing light in the middle of the night.
link |
I realize this is not a discussion
link |
about sleep and circadian rhythms,
link |
but the data now are so strong showing
link |
that viewing bright light from about 10 PM to 4 AM
link |
too often triggers activation
link |
of this circuit called the habenula.
link |
So this is I, it goes from your retina
link |
to a structure called the habenula, H-A-B-E-N-U-L-A.
link |
Then from the habenula to some of this reward circuitry
link |
and it suppresses the activation of the reward circuitry,
link |
not just in that moment,
link |
but to things that you normally
link |
positively anticipate and pursue.
link |
And the reason I'm bringing this up now
link |
is because I haven't really gone into depth
link |
on the dopamine system before.
link |
Now you understand you have this very precious reward system
link |
that's kind of a double-edged sword.
link |
It needs to be taken care of and treated well.
link |
You want to use it, but not overuse it, et cetera.
link |
But getting bright light exposure in the middle of the night
link |
is reducing your capacity to release dopamine.
link |
So it's not just about the sleep
link |
that you're not getting in that time.
link |
It's also that you're not getting the dopamine
link |
that would otherwise be available to you.
link |
So you're actually taking,
link |
think of light in the middle of the night
link |
as a kind of antagonist,
link |
as kind of a blocker of dopamine.
link |
Maybe that'll help you.
link |
If you're somebody who has to work
link |
in the middle of the night
link |
and you want to bypass this dopamine suppression,
link |
please see the episode about jet lag and shift work
link |
because there are a lot of tips there
link |
that will allow you to do that.
link |
In order to understand how to control the dopamine system,
link |
how to leverage it for a better life,
link |
you need to understand the results
link |
of a very important experiment.
link |
This experiment was able to separate pleasure
link |
It's a very simple, but like many simple experiments,
link |
a very elegant experiment.
link |
and this has now been done in animals and in humans,
link |
they offered rats food.
link |
It was a food that they particularly liked
link |
and the animals would lever press for a pellet of food,
link |
kind of classic experiment.
link |
They'd eat the food and they presumably liked the food
link |
because they were motivated to press the lever and eat it.
link |
They took other rats.
link |
They eliminated the dopamine neurons.
link |
You can do this by injection of a neurotoxin
link |
that destroys these neurons.
link |
So they actually had no dopamine in their brain.
link |
They have no ability to release dopamine
link |
and they gave them a lever.
link |
The rats would sit there and they'd hit the lever
link |
and they'd eat the food.
link |
They're still enjoyed the food.
link |
So you say, well, okay,
link |
so dopamine isn't involved in motivation
link |
and it isn't involved in pleasure.
link |
No, it absolutely is.
link |
They could still enjoy the food,
link |
but if they moved the rat literally one body length
link |
away from the lever,
link |
what they found was the animals that had dopamine
link |
would move over to the lever, press it and eat.
link |
the rats that did not have dopamine available to them
link |
wouldn't even move one body length,
link |
one rat length to the lever in order to press it
link |
Dopamine therefore is not about the ability
link |
to experience pleasure.
link |
It is about motivation for pleasure.
link |
This has been repeated in humans
link |
in a variety of different scenarios.
link |
You can't really do the lever press thing quite as easily,
link |
but we know that people have low levels of dopamine
link |
are simply less motivated
link |
even though they can achieve pleasure.
link |
And this has serious ramifications
link |
for the fact that now quote unquote pleasure
link |
or ways to induce things that we believe give us pleasure
link |
are everywhere and they're within reach.
link |
We don't have to forage for our food.
link |
There's a lot of highly processed, high sugar, high fat foods.
link |
There's also foods that are healthy that tastes good,
link |
but they're, and hopefully they're pretty easy to get
link |
although that different people
link |
have different access to things of course.
link |
But dopamine isn't about the ability to experience pleasure.
link |
It's about how motivated you are to reach those pleasures.
link |
And so many of you are probably thinking,
link |
wow, I'm not a very motivated person.
link |
Like you talked about the one kind of procrastination
link |
earlier, what about when I just feel kind of meh about life?
link |
Now, for some of you, there may be a real clinical depression
link |
and you should talk to a professional.
link |
There are very good prescription drugs
link |
that can really help people.
link |
There's also great non-drug treatments of psychotherapy
link |
and other treatments that are being developed
link |
in addition to psychotherapy
link |
and the various kinds of psychoanalysis, et cetera,
link |
I think the data really points to the fact
link |
that a combination of pharmacology
link |
and talk therapies are generally best.
link |
And there are a huge range of these things.
link |
I know many of you are in these professions.
link |
We're not going to talk about that right now.
link |
There is a compound that's kind of interesting
link |
in the supplement space that isn't Macuna purines L-DOPA.
link |
It's not L-tyrosine
link |
that isn't promoting massive releases of dopamine
link |
or even dopamine alone,
link |
but a combination of dopamine and serotonin.
link |
And it's an intriguing molecule.
link |
It's sold over the counter.
link |
Again, you have to check with your healthcare provider
link |
before you would take anything or remove anything.
link |
That's very important.
link |
But it's phenylethylamine or PEA.
link |
PEA or beta phenylethylamine releases dopamine
link |
at low levels, but also serotonin at low levels.
link |
So it's kind of a cocktail of the motivation molecules
link |
as well as the quote unquote here and now molecules.
link |
And people's response to this varies widely,
link |
but many people report feeling heightened sense
link |
of mental acuity, wellbeing, et cetera.
link |
It is a bit of a stimulant like anything
link |
that triggers activation,
link |
the dopamine and norepinephrine pathway,
link |
but it is an interesting supplement.
link |
I actually haven't tried it before.
link |
So I can't report on my own experiences.
link |
I will point you however, to examine.com.
link |
It wouldn't be a Huberman Lab podcast episode
link |
if I didn't point you to examine.com,
link |
this incredible free resource
link |
where you can put in any supplement
link |
and it will tell you the quote unquote human effect matrix.
link |
It'll point you to the various studies.
link |
We always provide a link to this in the caption.
link |
It's an amazing resource.
link |
So you can go there to explore more,
link |
but I haven't talked about beta-phenyl ethyl amine before
link |
in previous podcasts.
link |
And I wanted to add it to the list of things
link |
that tap into the dopamine system that are in this,
link |
I guess we call it now the supplementation space.
link |
I personally am fascinated by these supplements
link |
and the things that exist out there
link |
that are non-prescription that seem to,
link |
at least in some people have positive effects.
link |
For instance, last episode,
link |
we talked about acetyl-l-carnitine,
link |
which there are several papers
link |
that report antidepressant effects,
link |
as well as positive effects on other things,
link |
sperm health, ovarian health, et cetera.
link |
I learned from a colleague that acetyl-l-carnitine in Europe
link |
is actually a prescription drug.
link |
In the US, it's sold over the counter.
link |
So I guess, depending on where you're listening to this,
link |
the availability might vary.
link |
And as always, I put the caveat,
link |
you have to check with your healthcare provider
link |
if it's right for you,
link |
but I'm fascinated by the fact that these things exist
link |
and that they lie somewhere between prescription drugs
link |
and doing nothing.
link |
And that makes them interesting compounds.
link |
And I think that PEA, beta-phenylethylamine,
link |
is yet another one of such compounds.
link |
I'm going to talk a lot about attention deficit
link |
and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
link |
in a future episode,
link |
but I do want to mention it today
link |
in the context of dopamine and impulsivity.
link |
So ADHD or ADD, so attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,
link |
ADD, are clinical diagnoses.
link |
I think a lot of people nowadays walk around and say,
link |
I have ADD or you have ADD.
link |
And indeed, one can create a sort of ADD
link |
by attention switching all the time.
link |
I'm a big fan of Cal Newport.
link |
He wrote the book, Deep Work.
link |
I believe he was the one who said,
link |
context switching is terrible for the brain.
link |
It's like the worst thing for the brain
link |
because then the brain learns to context switch
link |
and real deep work, productivity, learning of all kinds,
link |
good relationships of all kinds
link |
really come from depth of experience,
link |
not from breadth of experience within the moment.
link |
And so I think it's important to know
link |
that there's clinical ADHD and ADD,
link |
and then there's the kind that people are kind of inducing
link |
and through distraction and social media
link |
and phones, et cetera.
link |
And those can sometimes lead to clinical ADHD and ADD.
link |
But I want to talk about ADHD and ADD in kids just briefly.
link |
The drugs that are normally given
link |
to treat those conditions, ADHD and ADD,
link |
are things like Adderall,
link |
things that have very amphetamine-like qualities
link |
And you might ask, why would they do that?
link |
Well, it turns out that in kids,
link |
these activate that forebrain circuitry,
link |
the break that exists on the deeper mesolimbic circuitry.
link |
So as you recall, there's the VTA and nucleus accumbens,
link |
that's the kind of accelerators on dopamine.
link |
And then there's the prefrontal cortex,
link |
which acts as a break and can limit impulsivity.
link |
And those drugs tend to increase the activity of neurons
link |
in that pathway, the prefrontal cortex,
link |
and it reduces impulsivity.
link |
In fact, there's a experiment described
link |
in the book, The Molecule of More,
link |
which is really interesting,
link |
where they looked at impulsivity in obese children.
link |
And it turns out, they did this experiment in a safe way,
link |
that they looked at kids,
link |
both obese kids and non-obese kids,
link |
and their willingness to cross a very busy highway.
link |
And it turns out that the obese kids got hit by cars
link |
more often than non-obese children.
link |
It turns out this was a virtual reality experiment.
link |
And it had nothing to do with the fact
link |
that they were obese or limitations on movement
link |
or speed of movement.
link |
It was that the obese children were more impulsive
link |
in a variety of contexts,
link |
not just in this virtual crossing the street thing.
link |
And it turns out, the data points to the fact
link |
that impulsivity at age 10 is actually predictive
link |
of overeating disorders at a later stage in life.
link |
So some of these drugs that are designed
link |
to create heightened activity in the braking system,
link |
the decelerator of the reward pathway,
link |
are designed to reduce impulsivity
link |
because they suppress the release of dopamine,
link |
and they allow, hopefully, they allow children,
link |
and when they become adults,
link |
to better control the schedule of dopamine release.
link |
So now let's talk about what is a dopamine schedule
link |
and how you can leverage this
link |
in order to have heightened levels of motivation,
link |
but not get so much dopamine that you're experiencing
link |
or crash afterwards,
link |
and also so that you can experience heightened pleasure
link |
from the various pursuits that you are engaged in in life.
link |
I know many of you are interested in tools
link |
that will allow you to be more motivated,
link |
to focus longer, sleep better.
link |
That's really what the Huberman Lab Podcast is all about,
link |
but always framed in the context
link |
of neurobiological principles and objective mechanisms.
link |
There are some tools that we can apply
link |
to the dopamine system and motivation
link |
that can really improve our ability
link |
to stay in pursuit of things,
link |
as well as enjoy things after we've achieved our goals,
link |
or even en route to our goals.
link |
And here's the key principle.
link |
Dopamine is very subjective,
link |
meaning you can either allow yourself
link |
to experience the pleasure of reaching a milestone,
link |
of achieving or some craving or not.
link |
Now that won't work in the extreme cases of drugs
link |
like cocaine and amphetamine,
link |
but it's actually pretty powerful
link |
what one can do with the subjective system.
link |
In fact, I'm going to describe to you an experiment
link |
that highlights just how powerful the subjective readout
link |
or the subjective interpretation
link |
of a given experience really can be,
link |
even at the level of pharmacology.
link |
I love examples of subjective effects
link |
over things that would otherwise seem hardwired,
link |
because they really illustrate the interplay
link |
between our cognition, our belief system,
link |
and what would otherwise be these,
link |
just plug and chug kind of mechanisms of,
link |
you eat X amount of chocolate,
link |
or you drink X amount of water
link |
after being water deprived for a certain amount of time,
link |
and you get X amount of dopamine.
link |
Here's the experiment.
link |
The experiment was just published on March 18th, 2021,
link |
And the title of the experiment
link |
is expectation for stimulant type,
link |
modifies caffeine's effects on mood and cognition.
link |
This was done in college students.
link |
It's a fascinating study.
link |
What they did is they gave college students
link |
either placebo, essentially nothing,
link |
or 200 milligrams of caffeine.
link |
200 milligrams of caffeine is about what's in,
link |
well, a typical coffee,
link |
like a medium coffee that you would buy, a drip coffee,
link |
or a coffee that you'd make at home.
link |
It's a fair amount of caffeine.
link |
If you were to take it in pill form,
link |
it would definitely make you feel more alert
link |
unless you were one of those mutants,
link |
literally mutants that is insensitive to caffeine.
link |
And those mutants are pretty rare.
link |
So they took 65 undergraduate students
link |
They randomized them to either placebo or caffeine.
link |
And they told them
link |
that they were either getting caffeine or Adderall.
link |
Now, Adderall cognitively
link |
carries a very different expectation.
link |
College students know Adderall
link |
to be a much stronger stimulant than caffeine.
link |
They know it to create a sort of high.
link |
This is the way the students described it.
link |
And they thought that it would increase their level of focus
link |
and their ability to perform work.
link |
So what's really interesting
link |
is there was definitely an effect
link |
of placebo versus caffeine.
link |
That's not surprising, however, right?
link |
You take a placebo, you may or may not feel more alert,
link |
but you take 200 milligrams of caffeine,
link |
very likely you're going to feel very alert.
link |
But there was also an effect
link |
of whether or not the students
link |
thought they were getting caffeine or Adderall.
link |
The subjects receiving caffeine
link |
reported feeling more stimulated, anxious, and motivated
link |
than the subjects that received the placebo, okay.
link |
But the ones that expected Adderall
link |
reported stronger amphetamine effects.
link |
So they felt much more high.
link |
They performed better on a working memory test.
link |
they had all the increased cognitive effects
link |
that would have been seen with Adderall,
link |
but they were only ingesting caffeine.
link |
And so this shows an interaction between the drug caffeine
link |
and the expectation that it was Adderall.
link |
So it led to heightened performance
link |
simply because the students thought
link |
they were getting Adderall.
link |
Now, I don't know whether or not
link |
they told them at the end that it wasn't Adderall.
link |
I doubt that they did.
link |
This, if you want to look it up,
link |
this study was published
link |
in the Journal of Experimental Clinical Psychopharmacology.
link |
The paper is Looby et al, L-O-O-B-Y et al.
link |
And again, it was just published March 18th, 2021.
link |
Speaks to the fact that,
link |
yes, there are so-called placebo effects,
link |
but this is different than placebo.
link |
This is a belief effect about what the specific reactions
link |
to a given stimulant ought to be.
link |
And I think this is very important
link |
because I think that it points to the fact
link |
that the top down,
link |
the kind of higher level cognitive processes
link |
are impacting even the most basic fundamental aspects
link |
of say dopamine release or adrenaline release
link |
or epinephrine release
link |
in ways that can positively impact performance.
link |
In this case, it was a positive improvement
link |
in working memory and focus.
link |
As long as we're talking about caffeine,
link |
I'd like to point out a study that's really interesting.
link |
This was published in Journal of Neuroscience,
link |
which is the Society for Neurosciences
link |
kind of flagship journal.
link |
It's their journal.
link |
It's a good journal.
link |
And what they showed was that caffeine
link |
can increase dopamine release in the brain by about 30%.
link |
That wasn't surprising.
link |
I even said that earlier.
link |
But what they also showed
link |
is that it has a protective effect on dopamine neurons.
link |
So caffeine in some cases
link |
may not just increase dopamine release,
link |
but it might actually have a protective effect
link |
on dopamine neurons.
link |
Now that's distinctly different from some claims
link |
that drugs like MDMA, ecstasy,
link |
have been, it's been argued can are neurotoxic
link |
for things like dopamine and serotonin neurons.
link |
The study that was published about that
link |
in the journal Science,
link |
which is an extremely prestigious, excellent journal,
link |
later it was shown that it wasn't MDMA ecstasy
link |
that was given in that case.
link |
It was actually amphetamine,
link |
which is known to destroy dopaminergic
link |
and serotonergic neurons.
link |
So what does this mean?
link |
This means that low levels of caffeine may,
link |
at least in a few studies,
link |
be protective for dopamine neurons over time.
link |
That MDMA ecstasy,
link |
something that's in clinical trials right now
link |
for the treatment of trauma, PTSD,
link |
of various kinds and depression,
link |
but still illegal at this point in time,
link |
may, although it doesn't appear yet
link |
from any published studies,
link |
destroy dopaminergic neurons,
link |
perhaps serotonergic neurons.
link |
So there's a real asterisk and a question mark there,
link |
but amphetamine, and in particular methamphetamine,
link |
is very destructive for dopaminergic neurons.
link |
So I don't think any of us needed any additional reasons
link |
to avoid methamphetamine,
link |
this drug that creates huge increases in dopamine,
link |
and then huge crashes from that dopamine,
link |
very destructive drug,
link |
but in addition to that,
link |
seems to destroy dopaminergic neurons.
link |
From time to time, I've talked about nicotine on here,
link |
not smoking because obviously smoking is bad,
link |
lung cancer is bad for health, et cetera,
link |
but nicotine in supplemental form,
link |
I've mentioned that a very famous neuroscientist,
link |
Nobel Prize winning scientists,
link |
choose a lot of Nicorette,
link |
I know other people who choose Nicorette,
link |
they believe in its neuroprotective effects
link |
for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's,
link |
and indeed nicotine can stimulate dopamine release,
link |
we talked about that earlier.
link |
Whether or not it has a protective effect isn't clear,
link |
the protective effects might be through the noradrenergic
link |
and acetylcholine systems,
link |
those findings are still unclear,
link |
but it is interesting to note
link |
that nicotine can increase prolactin somewhat,
link |
there are a couple of studies,
link |
I'd be happy to link to them in the caption,
link |
that shows that nicotine taken too much
link |
over two long periods of time can also increase prolactin,
link |
which again is the opposite side of dopamine.
link |
So today we've talked a lot about the dopamine system
link |
and those kinds of schedules
link |
that will allow craving or addiction.
link |
What's the schedule of dopamine
link |
that's going to allow you to maximize
link |
on your pursuit of pleasure and your elimination of pain?
link |
And we get the answer to that
link |
from our good friend gambling.
link |
The reason gambling works,
link |
the reason why people will throw their lives away,
link |
the reason why people go back again and again and again
link |
to places like Las Vegas and Atlantic City
link |
is because of the hope and anticipation.
link |
Those are cities and places built on dopamine, right?
link |
They are leveraging your dopamine system.
link |
And I realized that there are experienced gamblers,
link |
there are people that enjoy gambling,
link |
I'll actually just say,
link |
I like sitting at the roulette table,
link |
I always take a designated amount of money, it's not much,
link |
I enjoy playing a little bit of roulette,
link |
I certainly enjoy when I win,
link |
I certainly don't like it when I lose,
link |
but I do it surely for the pleasure of playing
link |
and I do it very seldom, I don't have a gambling problem.
link |
And if I did, I'd probably tell you,
link |
but I don't have a gambling problem
link |
yet people throw away the entire lives on gambling.
link |
And as a friend of mine
link |
who's a certified addiction treatment specialist
link |
tells me that gambling addiction is a particularly sinister
link |
because the next time really could be
link |
the thing that changes everything.
link |
Unlike other addictions,
link |
the next time really could change everything
link |
and that's embedded in the mind of the gambling addict
link |
and rarely does it work out in favor of the wellbeing
link |
of the gambling addict and their family.
link |
However, the intermittent reinforcement schedule
link |
was discovered long ago by scientific researchers.
link |
So this is the slot machine that every once in a while
link |
gives you a win to keep you playing.
link |
This is the probability of winning on the craps table
link |
or the roulette table or at blackjack,
link |
just often enough that you're willing to buy tickets,
link |
head out there, play again,
link |
go downstairs again from your room,
link |
even though you swore you were done for the night.
link |
Intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful form
link |
of dopamine reward schedule to keep you doing something.
link |
So we can export that, we can use it for good.
link |
If there's something that you're pursuing in life,
link |
whether or not it's an academic goal
link |
or a financial goal or relationship goal,
link |
one of the things that you can do
link |
to ensure that you will remain on the path to that goal
link |
for a very long time
link |
and that you will continue
link |
to exceed your previous performance
link |
as well as continue to enjoy the dopamine release
link |
that occurs when you hit the milestones
link |
that you want to achieve
link |
is to occasionally remove reward subjectively.
link |
Let's say you set out a goal of making,
link |
I'm going to make this quantitative
link |
with respect to finances
link |
because it just is an easy description,
link |
but this could also be in sport, this could be in school,
link |
this could be in music,
link |
could be in anything, creative endeavors.
link |
But let's say you set out a certain financial goal
link |
or let's say you want to get a certain number of followers
link |
on whatever social media platform.
link |
As you reach each one of those goals,
link |
you should know now that the amount of dopamine
link |
is not going to peak,
link |
it's actually going to diminish and make you crave more.
link |
The key to avoiding that crash,
link |
but to still keep it in healthy levels
link |
that will allow you to continue your pursuit
link |
is as you are staircasing toward your goal,
link |
maybe that's dollars, maybe that's followers,
link |
maybe that's grades, maybe that's some other metric,
link |
it's medals or trophies,
link |
you actually want to blunt the reward response
link |
for some of those intermediate goals.
link |
Now I'm not telling you you shouldn't celebrate your wins,
link |
but I'm telling you not to celebrate all of them.
link |
Whereas a good friend of mine who recently,
link |
fortunately for him, had a great financial success,
link |
he asked me and somebody else, a good friend of mine,
link |
who's very tuned into dopamine reward schedules,
link |
understands how they work at a really deep level.
link |
And he said, I don't know what to do next.
link |
And we said, oh, well, that's simple.
link |
You should just give most of it away.
link |
And this wasn't a ploy to receive
link |
any of the money ourselves.
link |
This was really about reducing the impact of that reward.
link |
Now, hopefully giving money away,
link |
if you already have enough of it,
link |
would be something that was rewarding in and of itself.
link |
But if you're a student who's pursuing goals in university,
link |
or you're an athlete who's pursuing goals,
link |
it actually makes sense from a rational perspective,
link |
once you understand these mechanisms,
link |
to hit a new high point of performance,
link |
or to get that A plus or for you,
link |
if it's an A minus, et cetera,
link |
and to tell yourself, okay, that was good,
link |
but to actually actively blunt the reward,
link |
to not go and celebrate too intensely.
link |
Because in doing that,
link |
you keep your dopamine system in check,
link |
and you ensure that you're going to stay on the path
link |
of continued pursuit, not just for that thing,
link |
but for all things.
link |
Big increases in dopamine lead to big crashes in dopamine,
link |
and big increases in dopamine up the ante.
link |
They increase the extent to which
link |
you are willing to invest time and energy
link |
in order to achieve goals and rewards
link |
that may be out of your reach.
link |
You never really know if you're going to succeed.
link |
So to make this crystal clear,
link |
celebrate your wins, but don't celebrate every win.
link |
That's one way that you can ensure
link |
that you're going to continue down the path of progress.
link |
And I think most of the learning tools
link |
that are in schools are about reward,
link |
hopefully for genuine performance.
link |
They are about encouraging us.
link |
We do have to believe that we can perform well.
link |
One of the hallmarks of growth mindset
link |
is the internalization,
link |
that we're not getting it right yet.
link |
The word yet is very important.
link |
And also the sense that we reward our good behavior,
link |
our good performance, but not every time.
link |
One way to do this is to actually take the reward
link |
and reinforcement out of your own hands and your own mind.
link |
And you tell somebody that they are in control
link |
of whether or not you're allowed
link |
to feel good about your wins.
link |
Now, this is, I realize it's very unnatural for most people,
link |
but if you're somebody who's simply going to be in pursuit
link |
and you're going to really register your wins,
link |
and you think that that's going to actually
link |
make you a better performer,
link |
it will in the short term, but not in the long term.
link |
So you can lift the, what, Las Vegas and Atlantic City
link |
and other gambling mechanisms and places
link |
have known for a long time.
link |
They lifted it from the scientists.
link |
You can now take it back and you can start to leverage that
link |
and you just make it intermittent.
link |
You reward yourself not on a predictable schedule.
link |
So not every other time or every third time
link |
or every 10th time, but sometimes it's three in a row,
link |
then not at all for 10 days.
link |
So reward is important.
link |
Self-reward is critically important,
link |
but make sure that you're not doing it
link |
on such a predictable schedule
link |
that you burn out these dopamine circuits
link |
or that you undercut your own ability
link |
to strive and achieve.
link |
I actually have a story from graduate school
link |
in which I was forced
link |
into an intermittent reinforcement schedule
link |
that I do believe has served me very well
link |
in my scientific career and other aspects of life.
link |
My graduate advisor was an amazing scientist.
link |
Unfortunately, she passed away, but amazing scientist
link |
and amazing human being with a very dry
link |
and somewhat cruel sense of humor.
link |
Her name was Barbara Chapman.
link |
And we published a paper in the journal Science.
link |
And Science, Nature and Cell are considered the big three,
link |
the most competitive journals to publish in.
link |
I had a first author paper in Science.
link |
It was really exciting to me.
link |
I was a graduate student.
link |
I was very excited about the discovery.
link |
I was excited that it was in Science.
link |
I was just thrilled.
link |
And I remember when the paper finally got accepted
link |
because it involved a ton of revisions
link |
and a lot of very hard work.
link |
And she came in and she said, you know, paper got accepted.
link |
I was super excited.
link |
And she just kind of sat there and nodded.
link |
And I said, are we going to celebrate?
link |
Are we going to have a party?
link |
Or like, what are we going to do?
link |
And I'll never forget her answer.
link |
She said, hmm, I think we should skip this one.
link |
And I thought she was joking.
link |
And I said, what do you mean skip this one?
link |
We're going to publish the paper.
link |
She said, yeah, we're going to publish the paper.
link |
But she said, you know, maybe when you get like four more,
link |
maybe three, maybe two.
link |
And I thought she was messing with me.
link |
And she wasn't messing with me.
link |
And she was right.
link |
We never had a party.
link |
We never had a celebration for that paper.
link |
I think she was really trying to instill two ideas in me.
link |
One is that the work itself
link |
was what was supposed to be most rewarding.
link |
The practice of experimentation or writing the paper,
link |
the experience of achieving something
link |
they worked very hard at.
link |
And that did indeed feel amazing.
link |
I actually can still feel it in my body now, the excitement.
link |
So there's still a dopamine release
link |
or that arc is going very long.
link |
This would be almost 20 years ago now that this happened.
link |
So that's remarkable.
link |
The other one is that she's right.
link |
We never went out and celebrated
link |
and we did celebrate other wins,
link |
other papers in the future and things of that sort.
link |
But she was either consciously or subconsciously
link |
putting me on an intermittent reward schedule.
link |
And to this day, when something really good happens,
link |
I actually hesitate as to whether or not
link |
I want to internalize that and celebrate
link |
whether I want to tell anybody,
link |
which is its own form of celebration
link |
because then you're getting positive feedback.
link |
And so I am very cautious with how I deploy dopamine release
link |
in response to wins.
link |
It's certainly not the only way
link |
that I've navigated my career.
link |
There are a number of other principles I incorporate,
link |
but intermittent reward for wins, for achievements
link |
is a very powerful way to ensure
link |
that you will stay on the path of pursuit.
link |
At this point in the podcast,
link |
I'd like to take a moment to address some corrections.
link |
I made some errors in previous episodes.
link |
They weren't major errors,
link |
but a couple of you pointed them out.
link |
And it's important to me that we strive for accuracy.
link |
So the first one was I talked in a previous episode
link |
about the potential benefits for some people,
link |
not all of ashwagandha and its role in blunting cortisol
link |
in a way of offsetting medium-term and some long-term stress.
link |
It's a supplement that I've benefited from.
link |
It works through the GABA system and some other systems.
link |
Someone pointed out a study that admittedly
link |
I was focusing mainly on studies in humans
link |
during the episode, but they point out a study
link |
that was done in rats that showed
link |
that long-term administration of ashwagandha
link |
could actually create some negative effects,
link |
mainly on the thyroid
link |
and perhaps even the cortisol system,
link |
maybe the melatonin system.
link |
I just want to acknowledge that study.
link |
I'll reference it in the caption.
link |
Again, that was a rat study.
link |
I was focused on human studies.
link |
Please go to examine.com.
link |
Put in ashwagandha.
link |
It will tell you the various effects
link |
on different aspects of brain and body.
link |
It will also link to the PubMed articles
link |
that are relevant there.
link |
It is called the human effect matrix
link |
because that's only focused on humans.
link |
That's one of the reasons I like examine.com
link |
is it's focused on human studies.
link |
Again, a wonderful free resource.
link |
But I do appreciate that you pointed out that study
link |
because I do want people to be aware
link |
of the range of effects
link |
that these various compounds can have.
link |
As well, a couple of times in previous episodes,
link |
I said 5-HTP and not 5-HT.
link |
5-HT is serotonin.
link |
5-HTP is a precursor to serotonin.
link |
I was talking about supplements and compounds
link |
that can stimulate the release of serotonin.
link |
In the previous episode,
link |
I was actually referring to it in a context
link |
for which I don't personally like to take 5-HTP.
link |
That's just my own bias
link |
for reasons I described in that episode.
link |
But if you heard me say 5-HTP
link |
when I meant to say 5-HT, I apologize.
link |
And then last, I just want to point out again,
link |
something that I mentioned in the beginning,
link |
which is that the Huberman Lab Podcast
link |
is now subtitled in Spanish.
link |
Episodes one and two,
link |
as well as our welcome video are in Spanish.
link |
The other ones will be subtitled soon.
link |
You can expect that within the next couple of weeks.
link |
So if you know Spanish-speaking people
link |
who prefer to digest the information in Spanish,
link |
you can look forward to the Spanish subtitles.
link |
You need to activate those
link |
in the caption feature on YouTube.
link |
Unfortunately, we don't have Spanish dubbing over
link |
in the audio platforms.
link |
I realize once again, we've covered a lot of material.
link |
Hopefully you now know far more about the dopamine system,
link |
reward and motivation
link |
than you did at the beginning of this podcast.
link |
Hopefully you also understand the other side
link |
of dopamine and reward,
link |
which is pain and the balance of this pleasure pain system,
link |
as well as the molecules that we call,
link |
or that were described in the Molecule of More book,
link |
I should say, as the here and now molecules,
link |
things like serotonin and the endocannabinoids.
link |
We talked about a variety of supplement-based tools,
link |
things like vitamin B6 and zinc
link |
as they relate to prolactin, PEA,
link |
very interesting compound.
link |
Again, I've never tried it.
link |
Very interesting, definitely in use out there.
link |
L-DOPA, macuna purines,
link |
talked about caffeine,
link |
talked about nicotine,
link |
talked about how some of the effects of Adderall
link |
can be created purely cognitively
link |
without actually ingesting Adderall,
link |
simply by telling people they're ingesting Adderall,
link |
giving them caffeine.
link |
Very interesting study
link |
that I referenced a little bit earlier.
link |
And we talked about scheduling dopamine,
link |
adopting the intermittent reward schedule for yourself
link |
in order to ensure long-term engagement
link |
with pursuits that I hope are healthy pursuits
link |
and ones that serve you well.
link |
This was by no means an exhaustive coverage
link |
of all things dopamine and motivation.
link |
It was by no means the only time
link |
that we're going to talk about dopamine and motivation.
link |
Next episode, we're going to continue to talk about emotions
link |
from yet another perspective.
link |
But hopefully you have enough now to think about
link |
and that you can consider adopting
link |
in your own life and practices.
link |
As always, I really want to thank you
link |
for your time and attention.
link |
If you've learned something useful today,
link |
please pass it along.
link |
One of the things that we teach in science
link |
that I think is really wonderful to adopt in general in life
link |
is this idea of watch one, do one, teach one.
link |
This is what we tell graduate students
link |
and med students and postdocs.
link |
Watch somebody do something, learn it,
link |
then do it, apply it, see if it works for you,
link |
and then teach it.
link |
So it's usually not watch one, do one, teach one.
link |
It's usually watch one, do 20,
link |
teach as many people as you possibly want.
link |
I'm not looking for attribution.
link |
These are tools that are grounded in neuroscience
link |
for which I can't claim attribution.
link |
I'm just passing them along
link |
so that you can adopt them if you like
link |
and pass them along if you think people
link |
can benefit from them.
link |
Many of you have continued to ask
link |
how you can help support the Huberman Lab Podcast.
link |
If you like what we're doing here
link |
and you like the information that we're sharing,
link |
please click subscribe on the YouTube channel.
link |
That really helps us.
link |
As well, if you want to hit the notifications button,
link |
that will allow you to make sure
link |
you don't miss any episodes.
link |
Typically, we release episodes every Monday,
link |
but in the future, we may release episodes
link |
as well as short clips more often than that.
link |
As well, if you want to subscribe on Apple or Spotify
link |
or both, that's a great help to us.
link |
And on Apple, you have the opportunity
link |
to leave us up to a five-star review.
link |
We do use the comment section here on YouTube
link |
to inform future content and to address any questions
link |
and clear up any miscommunications
link |
or misconceptions that might arise.
link |
So please put your questions, your comments,
link |
and your suggestions for future content
link |
in the comment section below.
link |
The other way to support us is to check out our sponsors
link |
that were mentioned at the beginning of the podcast.
link |
The links to those sponsors are in the captions.
link |
As well, we've set up a Patreon account,
link |
which is patreon.com slash Andrew Huberman
link |
that allows you to support the podcast
link |
at any level that you like.
link |
As well, because we mentioned supplements
link |
from time to time throughout the podcast,
link |
and people always ask about what brands and sources
link |
we use or suggest for those supplements,
link |
we partnered with Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E.
link |
Thorne supplements are known to be
link |
among the most stringent supplements in terms of
link |
the specificity of what's in the bottle,
link |
matches what's on the label,
link |
the quality of the ingredients is exceedingly high.
link |
The Mayo Clinic and all the major sports organizations
link |
are partnered with Thorne because of that stringency
link |
and that commitment to rigor.
link |
If you'd like to see the supplements that I personally take,
link |
as well as get 20% off any of the supplements
link |
that Thorne makes, you can go to thorne.com slash U,
link |
that's the letter U slash Huberman,
link |
and you can see what I take and any of those supplements,
link |
as well as any of the other products on the Thorne site
link |
will be available to you at 20% off.
link |
That's thorne.com slash U slash Huberman
link |
to get 20% off any of the supplements that Thorne makes.
link |
Finally, I want to thank you
link |
for your time and attention today.
link |
I hope you learned a lot and that you learned
link |
a lot of possible tools that you could incorporate
link |
into your life as it relates to motivation and emotions.
link |
Thank you for your interest in science.
link |
I'll see you in the next one.