zazawowow on Nostr: It's really interesting how our culture still perpetuates the idea that dopamine is a ...

It's really interesting how our culture still perpetuates the idea that dopamine is a pleasure/reward chemical. The anhedonia hypothesis, from which this idea originated, was shown to be wrong in the 1990s, yet you still hear it everywhere in how people describe their actions.

I think the whole world might understand itself better, and have a better chance of changing behaviours, if we merely took a moment to recognise that our best understanding of dopamine is that it is a pre-reward motivational chemical.

It makes you go after the thing you desire and strengthens that pattern every time you do.

If you introduce uncertainty into the equation (reward amount, timing of reward), it can spike your dopamine by five times, making it unbearable not to seek it, akin to how it must feel being starving for food.

I've studied this in myself for years, and it has helped, though with much failure, to find ways to seek better behaviors. If you don't manage that, at least you might become more aware of what's going on in your own body.

#nostr #plebs #dopamine