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October 20 - November 18, 2021
the dopamine control circuit is the source of imagination. It lets us peer into the future to see the consequences of decisions we might make right now, and thus allows us to choose which future we prefer. Finally, it gives us the ability to plan how to make that imaginary future a reality.
Control dopamine carries us beyond the primitive I want of desire dopamine. It gives us tools to comprehend, analyze, and model the world around us, so we can extrapolate possibilities, compare and contrast them, then craft ways to achieve our goals.
Control dopamine takes the excitement and motivation provided by desire dopamine, evaluates options, selects tools, and plots a strategy to get what it wants.
Dopamine encourages us to maximize our resources by rewarding us when we do so—the act of doing something well, of making our future a better, safer place, gives us a little dopamine “buzz.”
Success takes years of hard work and so many revisions to the original idea that it’s barely recognizable by the time it gets to market. It’s not enough to just imagine the future. To bring an idea to fruition we must struggle with the uncompromising realities of the physical world.
We need to believe we can succeed before we are able to succeed.
Scientists call this self-efficacy.
But that’s not all. In addition to making housewives happy and productive, it also kept them thin. According to Life magazine, two billion tablets were prescribed annually in the 1960s for this purpose alone. But although people did lose weight, it was only temporary, and often at a high cost. Stop using the drug, and the weight comes right back. Keep using the drug and tolerance develops, so the user must take higher and higher doses to get the same effect. That’s dangerous. Too much amphetamine can bring about personality changes. It can also cause psychosis, heart attacks, strokes, and
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A relationship that is formed for the purpose of accomplishing a goal is called agentic, and it is orchestrated by dopamine.
Affiliative relationships, on the other hand, are for the purpose of enjoying social interactions.
Agentic people tend to be cool and distant. Affiliative people are affectionate and warm. They are also social, and turn to others for support.
Those who have trouble with affiliative relationships but who are skilled with agentic ones may be viewed as cold and uncaring, whereas those who are poor at both come across as aloof and isolated.
No matter how ignorant, degraded, or foolish a man is, there is something he knows, something he has mastered, that Emerson valued. Emerson sought to find intellectual worth in all people, regardless of their station in life. Such a relationship is agentic because the relationship is about gain—gaining knowledge. It’s not about the H&N pleasure of having company.
Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon.
it—some people have so much control dopamine that they become addicted to achievement, but are unable to experience H&N fulfillment. Think of people you know who work relentlessly toward their goals but never stop to enjoy the fruits of their achievements. They don’t even brag about them.
These individuals exhibit the effects of an imbalance between future-focused dopamine and present-focused H&N neurotransmitters. They flee the emotional and sensory experiences of the present. For
them, life is about the future, about improvement, about innovation. Despite the money and even fame that comes from their efforts, they are usually unhappy. No matter how much they do, it’s never enough.
Their struggle with internal control manifests itself as impulsivity and difficulty keeping themselves focused on complex tasks.
Poor focus, concentration, and impulse control can severely interfere with their lives, and it can make them difficult to be with. Sometimes they don’t
pay attention to details, or follow through on tasks. They may start paying bills, then switch to doing the laundry, then change a light bulb, then sit down and watch TV with everything strewn all over the place. During conversations, they can become distracted easily, and not listen to what people say to them. Sometimes they don’t keep track of time, making them late, and they may lose things, such as car keys, cell phones, even passports.
Adults with ADHD make impulse purchases and interrupt people.
The most common treatments for ADHD are Ritalin and amphetamine, stimulants that boost dopamine in the brain. When these drugs are used to treat people with ADHD, tolerance usually doesn’t develop as it does for those who take these drugs to lose weight,
get high, or enhance their performance. Nevertheless, stimulants are addictive drugs. The FDA puts them in the same class as opioids, such as morphine and OxyContin. These are considered the highest risk in terms of abuse, and they have th...
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But rigorous testing showed unambiguously that adolescents who were treated with stimulant drugs were less likely to develop addictions. In fact, those who started the drug at the youngest age and took the highest doses were the least likely to develop problems with illicit drugs. Here’s why: if you strengthen the dopamine control circuit, it’s a lot easier to make wise decisions. On the other hand, if effective treatment is withheld, the weakness of the control circuit is not corrected. The desire circuit acts unopposed, increasing the likelihood of high-risk, pleasure-seeking behavior.
Country of residence did not affect the relationship between ADHD and obesity. There was also no difference between men and women.
The results were as expected. Girls who had problems with impulsivity and planning at age 10 gained more weight over the following six years. The scientists reported that a significant amount of the weight these girls gained came from bingeing—intense bursts of no self-control.
It’s important to remember that biology is not destiny. People whose control-dopamine systems are at one extreme or the other can change. People with ADHD can improve dramatically with medication, psychotherapy, and sometimes just time.
When it’s revved up, it suppresses feelings of guilt, which is an H&N emotion.
Dopamine pursues more, not morality; to dopamine, force and fraud are nothing more than tools.
And that difference is key: the dopamine surge triggered by winning leaves us wanting more.
The ability to suppress emotions such as fear, anger, or overwhelming desire provides an advantage in the midst of conflict. Emotion is almost always a liability that interferes with calculated action.
From dopamine’s perspective there is nothing to be gained, no resources to maximize, no advantage to be taken. Emotion overwhelms control dopamine’s consideration, caution, and calculation.
Someone with a highly active desire circuit might be impulsive or difficult to satisfy, constantly seeking more. His counterpart would be someone who is easily satisfied. Instead of downing shots at a noisy nightclub, a less dopaminergic person might prefer to spend the day gardening and then go to bed early.
Alternatively, someone with a highly active control circuit might be cold and calculating, ruthless and devoid of emotion. Her counterpart would be a warm, generous person, who is more interested in nurturing friendships than winning competitions.
These people all have one thing in common, though. They are obsessed with making the future more rewarding at the expense of being able to experience the joys of the present.
Emotion is critical to our ability to understand the world, but emotions can sometimes overwhelm us. When that happens, we make less-logical decisions.
In complex situations, people who have what we call “a cool head,” people who are more dopaminergic, are able to suppress this response, and make more deliberate choices that often work better.
When bold action is required in the midst of chaos, the one who can stay calm, take stock of available resources, and quickly develop a plan of action is the one who will pull through.
This real-life story is an excellent example of the interplay between dopamine and the H&N chemical of fight or flight, norepinephrine.
Conventional wisdom would attribute his survival at sea to “running on adrenaline.” In fact, the opposite was true. He wasn’t running on adrenaline; he was running on dopamine.
Some people are naturally better at suppressing emotion than others. In fact, they’re born that way, in part because of the number and nature of their dopamine receptors, molecules in the brain that react when dopamine is released. They differ based on genetics.
The detachment test measured traits such as the tendency to avoid sharing personal information and to become involved with other people. The scientists found a direct relationship between receptor density and personal engagement.
High density was associated with a high level of emotional detachment. In a separate study, people who had the highest detachment scores described themselves as “cold, socially aloof, and vindictive in their relationships.” By contrast, those with the lowest detachment scores described themselves as “overly nurturing and exploitable.”
Most people have personalities that fall somewhere between the highest and lowest scores on the detachment scale. We’re neither aloof nor overly nurturing....
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If we’re engaged with the peripersonal—up close, in direct contact, focused on the present moment—H&N circuits are activated, and the warm, emotional aspects of our personality come out. When we’re engaged in the extrapersonal—at a distance, thinking abstractly, focused on the future—th...
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Very few people would put their hands on an innocent person’s back and push him to his death. Yet very few people would hesitate to write the software that would manage the track switches in a way that minimizes loss of life.
2016 film Eye in the Sky.
The neurotransmitter dopamine is the source of desire (via the desire circuit) and tenacity (via the control circuit); the passion that points the way and the willpower that gets us there. Usually the two work together, but when desire fixates on things that will bring us harm in the long run—a third piece of cake, an extramarital affair, or an IV injection of heroin—dopaminergic willpower turns around, and does battle with its companion circuit.
Willpower isn’t the only tool control dopamine has in its arsenal when it needs to oppose desire. It can also use planning, strategy, and abstraction, such as the ability to imagine the long-term consequences of alternate choices.
Willpower is like a muscle. It becomes fatigued with use, and after a fairly short period of time, it gives out.
