endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin, endocannabinoids” เพื่อให้อยู่กับความจริง เข้าอกเข้าใจความรู้สึก พอใจกับคู่ชีวิต กับสิ่งที่ได้

Why are we always hopeful for solutions even in the darkest times--and so good at figuring them out? The human brain contains four major dopamine “pathways,” or connections between different parts of the brain that act as highways for chemical messages called neurotransmitters. Each pathway has its own associated cognitive and motor (movement) processes. Three of these pathways—the mesocortical, mesolimbic, and nigrostriatal pathways—are considered our “reward pathways” and have been shown to be dysfunctional in most cases of addiction. They are responsible for the release of dopamine in various parts of the brain, which shapes the activity of those areas. The fourth, the tuberoinfundibular pathway, regulates the release of a hormone called prolactin that is required for milk production. Figure 1: Three dopamine pathways and their related cognitive processes. Most of your dopamine is generated deep in the midbrain, and it is released in many different areas across the brain. These areas are largely responsible for behaviors associated with learning, habit formation, and addiction. I was distracted when at work, distracted when with family and friends, constantly tired, irritable, and always swimming against a wash of ambient stress induced by my constant itch for digital information. My stress had an electronic feel to it, as if it was made up of the very bits and bytes on my screens."For those who enjoy some history with their science, Epstein’s book is the place to go for understanding how we know what we know about our bodies’ chemical ringmasters. From tests on brains in jars to the precise hormonal research of the past couple of decades, Aroused covers the gamut, while also telling an engaging story about the role hormones play in just about every facet of our lives. It’s a detective tale with multiple twists, and an informativemust read for the year. We all desire a break from our routines and those parts of life that upset us. What if, instead of trying to escape these things, we learn to turn toward them, to reach a peaceful harmony with ourselves and the people we share our lives with? Lembke has written a book that radically changes the way we think about mental illness, pleasure, pain, reward, and stress. Turn toward it. You’ll be happy you did.” Welcome to The Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.

Well, first of all, it is not just responsible for pleasure. It is responsible for motivation and drive, primarily at the psychological level, also for craving. Those three things are sort of the same. Motivation, drive and craving. It also controls time perception, and we will get deep into how dopamine can modulate time perception and how important it is that everybody be able to access increases in dopamine at different time scales. This turns out to be important to not end up addicted to substances, but it also turns out to be very important to sustain effort and be a happy person over long periods of time, which I think most everybody wants. It certainly is adaptive in life to be able to do that.This is a very interesting book on how just one chemical – Dopamine influences so much of our behaviour. The undue influence Dopamine exerts is amazing considering the fraction the Dopamine circuit occupies in our brains. This is a well written book and very informative as well. If the most successful entrepreneurs manage to find the time, I can, too. Sometimes, that means being a little thrifty: like reading in short bursts throughout the day — on the way to work or waiting in line at the coffee shop. Or, instead of zoning out with Netflix before bed, try squeezing in a few chapters. And eventually what typically happens is they will stop getting dopamine release from that activity as well, and then they drop into a pretty serious depression. And this can get very severe and people have committed suicide from these sorts of patterns of activity. But what about the more typical scenario? What about this scenario of somebody who is really good at working during the week, they exercise during the week, they drink on the weekends? Well, that person is only consuming alcohol maybe one or two nights a week, but oftentimes that same person will be spiking their dopamine with food during the middle of the week. Now we all have to eat, and it's nice to eat foods that we enjoy. I certainly do that. I love food, in fact. But let's say they're eating foods that really evoke a lot of dopamine release in the middle of the week. A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books: If we get clarity on how our brain chemistry works, we can use that understanding to create a life full of healthy, sustainable and truly rewarding relationships and accomplishments, and more effectively avoid the traps of modern existence that are just about to kill us all.

Now, of course, we all should engage in activities that we enjoy. I certainly do, everybody should. A huge part of life is pursuing activities and things that we enjoy. The key thing is to understand this relationship between the peaks and the baseline and to understand how they influence one another, because once you do that, you can start to make really good choices in the short run, and in the long run, to maintain your level of dopamine baseline, maybe even raise that level of dopamine baseline and still get those peaks and still achieve those feelings of elevated motivation, elevated desire and craving. Because again, those peaks and having a sufficiently healthy, high level of dopamine baseline are what drove the evolution of our species, and they're really what drive the evolution of anyone's life progression too. So they're a good thing. Dopamine is a good thing.One thing that's not often discussed about dopamine, but is extremely important to know, is that dopamine doesn't work on its own. Neurons that release dopamine corelease glutamate. Glutamate is a neurotransmitter, and it's a neurotransmitter that is excitatory, meaning it stimulates neurons to be electrically active. So now even if you don't know any cell biology, you should start to gain a picture that dopamine is responsible for movement, motivation and drive. It does that through two pathways, but also the dopamine stimulates action in general because it releases this excitatory neurotransmitter, it tends to make certain neurons that are nearby, or even that are far away — because of volumetric release — it tends to make those more active. So dopamine is really stimulating, and indeed we say that dopaminergic transmission, or dopamine, tends to stimulate sympathetic arousal. Sympathetic doesn't have anything to do with sympathy. It just simply means that it tends to increase our levels of alertness. It tends to bring an animal or a human into a state of more alertness, readiness and desire to pursue things outside the confines of its skin. Why is it so hard for these authors to really trust that someone is actually interested in their topic and realize that they don't have to constantly lure the reader into stupidity? Yes. I am looking at you too, David Eagleman. And this is very important. How satisfying or exciting or pleasureful a given experience is doesn't just depend on the height of that peak. It depends on the height of that peak relative to the baseline. So if you increase the baseline and you increase the peak, you're not going to achieve more and more pleasure from things. I'll talk about how to leverage this information in a little bit, but just increasing your dopamine, yes, it will make you excited for all things. It will make you feel very motivated, but it will also make that motivation very short-lived. So there's a better way to increase your dopamine. There's a better way to optimize this peak-to-baseline ratio.