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

by Daniel Z. Lieberman

effective strategy, planned in advance, sometimes in excruciating detail, and always aimed at gaining resources or control. This is dopamine-driven

aggression, and it tends to have a low emotional content. It is cold violence.

Aggression driven by passion is a lashing out at provocation. This is not a calculated action orchestrated by the dopamine control circuit—just the opposite. When passion drives aggression in response to provocation, dopamine is suppressed by the H&N circuits, and people who display this type of aggression usually degrade their future

well-being.

They can end up injured, arrested, or simp...

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.

They are obsessed with making

the future more rewarding at the expense of being able to experience the joys of the present.

This real-life story is an excellent example of the interplay between dopamine and the H&N chemical of fight or flight, norepinephrine. When the steering mechanism broke, norepinephrine kicked in. The H&N emotion of fear overwhelmed the sailor. He just wanted to get out of the situation. At first, the initial neurochemical H&N flood displaced his dopaminergic ability to plan. Nevertheless, the fact that he could sense that panic was on the way, but was able to hold it off, is an indication that his dopamine system had not shut down completely.

After only a few seconds, control dopamine was fully activated, and he began to make rational plans. H&N norepinephrine was shut down and the fear receded, leaving a passionless, cerebral approach to survival. After the crisis was over and he was safely on shore, dopamine receded, leaving room for H&N to come roaring back, triggering the shaking and weeping.

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. During the intense moments when he saved the boat, dopamine was in control and adrenali...

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. Researchers measured the density of dopamine receptors (how many there are, and how closely they crowd together) in the brains of a variety of people, and compared the results to tests that measured the person’s “emotional detachment.”

How we react depends on the circumstances. 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—the rational, emotionless parts of our personality are more likely to be seen.

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. It’s almost as if there were two separate minds evaluating the situation. One mind is rational, making decisions based on reason alone. The other is empathic, unable to kill a man, regardless of the big-picture outcome.

One seeks to dominate the situation by imposing control to maximize the number of lives saved; the other does not. Whether a person chooses one outcome or the other partly depends on activity within the dopamine circuits.

Sometimes we act one way: cold, calculating, seeking to dominate the environment for future gain. Sometimes we act another: warm, empathic, sharing what we have for the present joy of making others happy. Dopamine control circuits and H&N circuits work in opposition, creating a balance that allows us to be humane

toward others, while safeguarding our own survival.

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 com...

It’s easy to get motivated when there is an immediate reward.

In the motivation experiment, the participants were shown a thermometer with two lines. One showed the current level of activity in the motivation region, and the other represented a

higher target they should try to achieve. Now they could see which strategies worked and which ones didn’t. After a while, they built up a collection of imagined scenes that effectively boosted motivation activity. These strategies continued to work even when the thermometer was removed. Strengthening willpower was possible, but it required a high-tech window that allowed the test participants to look deep inside their brains.

The goal of addiction psychotherapy is to pit one part of the brain against another. Part of the dopamine desire circuit becomes malignant in drug addiction, pushing the addict into compulsive, uncontrollable use. It has to be opposed by an equally potent force. We know willpower won’t do it. What other resources can be called on to win this fight?

In motivational enhancement therapy (MET), patients tolerate feeling resentful and deprived, the punishment of disappointed dopamine, because they know it will lead to something better.

The goal of the therapy is to stoke the flames of desire for a better life.

There’s an old saying: “We don’t believe what we hear, we believe what we say.” For example, if you give someone a lecture on the importance of honesty, then have them play a game in which cheating is rewarded, you’ll probably find that the lecture had little effect. On the other hand, if you ask someone to give you a lecture on

the importance of honesty, they will be less likely to cheat when they sit down to play the game.

MET is a little manipulative. When the patient makes a statement the therapist likes, referred to as a pro-change statement, such as, “Sometimes I have trouble getting to work on time after a night of heavy drinking,” the therapist responds with positive reinforcement, or a request to “tell me more about that.” On the other hand, if the patient makes an anti-change statement, such as, “I work hard all day, and I deserve to relax in the evening with a few martinis,” the therapist doesn’t argue, because that would provoke more anti-change statements as the debate goes back and forth. Instead, she simply changes the subject. Patients usua...

Cues that suddenly and unexpectedly remind an addict of drugs produce a reward prediction error,

like the addict who felt an overwhelming desire for heroin when he saw a bottle of laundry bleach. Desire dopamine cranks up, motivating the addict to use, and threatening

to shut down completely if it doesn’t get...

The patient and a friend are sent on a “search-and-destroy mission” in which everything that reminds the patient of alcohol is removed from his home: cocktail glasses, shakers, hip flasks, martini olives, and so forth.

He may share the sentiment expressed by Saint Augustine while he was carrying on an affair with a young woman. He prayed, Lord, give me chastity, but not yet.

Alcoholics can still overcome their addiction, but impairing control dopamine’s ability to oppose desire dopamine’s impulses makes things difficult. Not only does alcohol create a perpetual desire; it also undermines the future-focus needed to stay on the road to recovery. The good news is we now know this weapon exists, and if we can find a way to reverse the DNA changes, we can neutralize it.

If an AA member slips and experiences a relapse, no one condemns him, but he will inevitably feel like he has let them down. The H&N experience of guilt is a powerful motivator (as your mother knows).

The combination of emotional support and the threat of guilt helps many addicts maintain a long-lasting sobriety.

The level of H&N empathy for the developing fetus is so high that many women smokers jump right to the finish line and stop smoking without any conscious effort at all.

Once the dopaminergic rationalization of I’m not hurting anyone but myself breaks down, the door opens for a rapid readjustment in the H&N–dopamine balance.

The control circuit can be crafty. Sometimes it charges straight ahead and dominates a situation through the power of confidence. Other times it leads to submissive behaviors that induce others

to cooperate with us, multiplying our ability to get things done and reach our goals.

Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D. M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(5), 1252–1265. MacInnes, J. J., Dickerson, K. C., Chen, N. K., & Adcock, R. A. (2016). Cognitive neurostimulation: Learning to volitionally sustain ventral tegmental area activation. Neuron, 89(6), 1331–1342.

Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected. —William Plomer, writer

The risks and rewards of the highly dopaminergic brain. In which dopamine breaks down the barriers of the ordinary.

The creative mind is the most potent force on earth. No oil well, gold mine, or thousand-acre farm can compete with the wealth-producing possibilities of a creative idea. Creativity is the brain at its best. Mental illness is the opposite. It reflects a brain struggling to manage even the most ordinary challenges of everyday life. Yet madness and genius, the worst and the best the brain can do, both depend on dopamine. Because of this basic chemical connection, madness and genius are more closely connected to each other than either is to the way ordinary brains work. Where does this connection come from, and what does it tell us about the essential nature of both? Let’s start with madness.

Psychiatrists prescribe medications called antipsychotics that reduce activity within the dopamine desire circuit. At first glance, that seems odd. Stimulation of the desire circuit typically leads to excitement, wanting, enthusiasm, and motivation. How could excess stimulation cause psychosis? The answer comes from the concept of salience, a phenomenon that will also play a crucial role in understanding the roots of creativity.

SALIENCE AND THE DOPAMINE CONNECTION Salience refers to the degree to which things are important, prominent, or conspicuous. One kind of salience is the quality of being unusual. For example, a clown walking down the street would be more salient—more out of place—than a man in a business suit. Another kind of salience is value. A

briefcase with $10,000 in it is more salient than a wallet with $20. Different things are salient to different people. A jar of peanut butter is more salient to a boy with a peanut allergy than to one who is allergy free. It would also be more salient to a girl who...

Things are salient when they are important to you, if they have the potential to impact your well-being, for good or for evil. Things are salient if they have the potential to affect your future. Things are salient if they trigger desire dopamine. They broadcast the message, Wake up. Pay attention. Get excited. This is important.