Sorry, you must be a member of this group to do that.
More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Sometimes our environment is so enriched with new things that latent inhibition is unable to pick and choose what is most important.
I’m in years but not months. I’m in weeks but not days. What am I?
letter e.
What one word does the sequence “HIJKLMNO” represent?
H2O.
dreams are inner representations of inner ideas. Cut off from the senses, dreams allow dopamine to run free, unconstrained by the concrete facts of external reality.
book The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use Dreams for Creative Problem Solving—and How You Can Too, Dr. Barrett
ordinary people can use dreams to solve practical problems,
dream incubation techniques. These are strategies people can use to increase the likelihood of having a problem-solving dream.
DREAM INCUBATION: HOW TO SOLVE PROBLEMS IN YOUR SLEEP
Think about the problem before you go to bed. If possible, put it in the form of a visual image. If it’s a problem with a relationship, imagine the person it involves.
Hold the image in your mind, so it’s the last thing you think of before you fall asleep.
As soon as you wake up from a dream, write it down, whether or not you think it’s related to the problem. Dreams can be tricky, and the answer may be disguised.
It may take a few nights before you find what you’re looking for, and the solution you get from your dream may not be the best solution. But it will probably be a novel solution, one that approaches the problem from a new direction.
High levels of dopamine suppress H&N functioning, so brilliant people are often poor at human relationships.
His dopaminergic mind was both a blessing and a curse—the elevated levels of dopamine that allowed him to discover relativity was most likely the same dopamine that drove him from relationship to relationship, never allowing him to make the switch to H&N-focused, long-term companionate love.
We’ve already seen the impulsive pleasure-seeker who has difficulty maintaining long-term relationships and is
vulnerable to addiction.
They’re overly focused on maximizing future resources at the expense of appreciating the here and now. The pleasure seeker always wants more. No matter how much he gets, it’s never enough. No matter how much he looks forward to some promised pleasure, he is incapable of finding satisfaction in it. As soon as it comes he turns his attention to what’s next.
It may be unseemly but it is explainable. Highly dopaminergic people typically prefer abstract thinking to sensory experience. To them, the difference between loving humanity and loving your neighbor is the difference between loving the idea of a puppy and taking care of it.
Liberals often refer to themselves as progressives, a term that implies constant improvement.
The word conservative, on the other hand, implies maintaining the best of what we have inherited from those who came before
There is also an emotional benefit for the giver. The hedonistic paradox states that people who seek happiness for themselves will not find it, but people who help others will. Altruism has been associated with greater well-being, health, and longevity.
Conservatives have less sex than liberals, possibly because conservatives are more likely to be in companionate relationships in which testosterone is suppressed by oxytocin and vasopressin. Though the sex may be less frequent, it’s more likely to end in orgasm for both partners.
letting go of control, which is necessary for climax to occur, is easier within a trusting relationship.
Despite higher rates of marital satisfaction, more reliable orgasms, and less cheating, couples in red states are more likely to get divorced than those in blue states. They also consume more pornography.
In addition to tapping into primitive needs, another reason fear works so well is loss aversion, meaning that the pain of loss is stronger than the pleasure of gain.
What was amplifying the loss reaction? The researchers turned their attention to the amygdala—an H&N structure that processes fear and other negative emotions. Every time a participant lost a bet, their amygdala fired up, intensifying feelings of distress. It was H&N emotion that was driving loss aversion. The H&N system doesn’t care about the future. It doesn’t care about things we might get. It cares about what we have right now. And when those things are threatened, out comes the experience of fear and distress.
Interesting
dopamine makes people seek out more. It makes them restless and dissatisfied. It makes them long for something better.
People with dopaminergic personalities may do well when coping with novel situations, but they often have difficulty with relationships.
Cocaine blocks the dopamine transporter like a sock shoved into a vacuum cleaner nozzle. The blockage allows the
dopamine to interact with its receptor over and over again. When that happens, people experience increased energy, goal-directed activity, and sexual drive. They have elevated self-esteem, euphoria, and racing thoughts that jump from one topic to another. Cocaine intoxication is so similar to mania that doctors have trouble telling them apart.
As noted, bipolar disorder isn’t all or nothing. Mood-disorder specialists talk about a bipolar spectrum. At one end of the spectrum is bipolar I. People with this form of the illness experience severe mania and severe depression. Next comes bipolar II. People with bipolar II experience severe depression, but more mild episodes of elevated mood called hypomania (hypo means below, like a hypodermic injection that delivers a drug underneath the skin). Farther down the spectrum is cyclothymia, which is characterized by cycles of hypomania and mild depressive episodes. Then there is something
...more
Hyperthymic temperament is not considered an illness. It doesn’t occur in episodes like bipolar disorder. People with hyperthymic temperament just have a “hyper” personality, and they have it all the time.
There’s only one thing that will save us: the ability to achieve a better balance, to overcome our obsession with more, appreciate the unlimited complexity of reality, and learn to enjoy the things we have.
Creativity is different because it stirs together H&N with dopamine. It’s like mixing little bit of carbon with iron to make steel.
If we are able to intermingle dopamine with H&N, we can achieve that harmony. All dopamine all the time is not the path to the best possible future. It’s sensory reality and abstract thought working together that unlocks the brain’s full potential.
