How to Increase Motivation & Drive

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.900 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.920 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.640 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.740 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.760 | This podcast is separate from my teaching

00:00:17.540 | and research roles at Stanford.

00:00:19.400 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:00:21.320 | to bring you zero cost to consumer information

00:00:23.520 | about science and science-related tools.

00:00:26.520 | Along those lines,

00:00:27.360 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:00:30.340 | Our first sponsor is Athletic Greens.

00:00:32.660 | Athletic Greens is an all-in-one

00:00:34.360 | vitamin mineral probiotic drink.

00:00:37.280 | I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012,

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00:00:43.120 | The reason I started taking Athletic Greens

00:00:44.960 | is because I found it rather dizzying

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00:00:52.440 | It also includes probiotics,

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00:01:00.500 | for immunity, for metabolic health, endocrine health,

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00:01:48.920 | Our second sponsor of today's podcast is Headspace.

00:01:52.000 | Headspace is a meditation app that makes meditation easy.

00:01:55.540 | I've been meditating on and off since I was 16 years old.

00:01:58.380 | I'm 45 now, so that's about 30 years

00:02:01.000 | of on and off meditation,

00:02:02.680 | and I confess, most of that time, it was off,

00:02:05.740 | meaning I find it really hard

00:02:07.140 | to stick to a meditation practice.

00:02:09.420 | A few years ago, I discovered Headspace

00:02:11.100 | while flying on JetBlue flights,

00:02:12.400 | 'cause at that time, they were offering Headspace

00:02:14.820 | as something you could watch instead of TV or movies,

00:02:17.560 | and it made me feel great.

00:02:19.100 | I'd find that I arrived where I was going,

00:02:21.360 | more rested, more relaxed, and I got the Headspace app,

00:02:24.680 | and I started using it daily,

00:02:26.240 | and I've continued to use it daily.

00:02:28.220 | Headspace has a large number of meditations,

00:02:31.220 | all supported by science.

00:02:33.100 | There's also now just a tremendous amount of science

00:02:35.380 | supporting a meditation practice for all sorts of things,

00:02:38.720 | like improved sleep, reduced impulsivity,

00:02:42.040 | improved cognition.

00:02:43.600 | They're just a myriad of positive effects of meditation.

00:02:46.360 | The hardest thing is doing it, and Headspace makes that easy.

00:02:49.400 | If you want to try the Headspace app

00:02:51.100 | and all the meditations they have,

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00:03:07.940 | Magic Spoon is a low carb, grain-free, keto-friendly cereal.

00:03:12.240 | As I've mentioned a few times before on this podcast,

00:03:14.840 | the way I eat throughout the day has everything to do

00:03:16.760 | with when I want to be alert and when I want to be sleepy.

00:03:19.380 | So in the first part of the day, I fast,

00:03:21.600 | because that enhances alertness.

00:03:24.260 | Then I eat keto.

00:03:25.440 | So my lunch and my afternoon meals are ketogenic.

00:03:28.520 | And then in the evening, I eat starches and vegetables

00:03:31.080 | because those aid the transition to sleep.

00:03:33.320 | So for me, Magic Spoon as a keto cereal is a great snack.

00:03:36.980 | It's really tasty.

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00:03:40.960 | They have a bunch of different flavors.

00:03:42.760 | I like the frosted flavor,

00:03:44.200 | also because it tastes like donuts,

00:03:45.800 | and I have a pastry affliction, and I love pastries.

00:03:49.120 | So Magic Spoon allows me to remain on keto during the day.

00:03:52.720 | It's healthy, it tastes great, I really enjoy it.

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00:04:15.520 | A quick note before we begin today's discussion

00:04:18.480 | about the neuroscience of motivation.

00:04:21.320 | I'm pleased to announce that we have now captioned

00:04:24.400 | episodes one and two in Spanish,

00:04:27.360 | and soon all the episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast

00:04:30.380 | will be captioned on YouTube in Spanish.

00:04:33.400 | We've used some of the revenue from the podcast

00:04:35.520 | to hire expert captioners, so it should be accurate.

00:04:38.960 | You might catch a mistake here or there,

00:04:40.920 | or a dialect difference from time to time,

00:04:43.800 | but by our read and by our experts' reads,

00:04:47.660 | it's all accurate.

00:04:48.900 | So we're very pleased that people who speak Spanish

00:04:52.200 | and digest information best in Spanish

00:04:54.720 | can now digest the information here on the podcast.

00:04:57.620 | Thanks to everyone for supporting the podcast,

00:04:59.600 | which allows us to broaden our reach in these ways.

00:05:02.280 | And we do hope to expand to other languages

00:05:05.280 | in the very near future.

00:05:06.760 | This month, we're talking all about

00:05:08.240 | the neuroscience of emotions.

00:05:10.080 | And today we're going to talk about

00:05:11.520 | an extremely important topic

00:05:13.360 | that's central to our daily life, and that's motivation.

00:05:17.160 | We're going to talk about pleasure and reward.

00:05:19.760 | What underlies our sense of pleasure or reward?

00:05:22.880 | We're going to talk about addictions.

00:05:24.800 | You can't have a discussion about pleasure and reward

00:05:27.160 | without having a discussion about addictions

00:05:29.520 | and the addictive properties of certain substances,

00:05:32.020 | as well as how to break free of addiction.

00:05:34.860 | As well, we're going to talk about the neurochemistry

00:05:38.480 | of drive and mindset.

00:05:40.720 | So all these themes are woven together

00:05:42.560 | in the context of emotions.

00:05:44.340 | Each one of them, of course,

00:05:45.280 | could also be its own entire month of the podcast.

00:05:47.960 | And in fact,

00:05:48.800 | we are going to have an entire month devoted to addiction.

00:05:52.360 | And I have a very special guest

00:05:53.600 | that's going to be joining us to talk about

00:05:55.560 | the science and clinical practices

00:05:57.960 | that we know are important for understanding

00:06:00.660 | and treating addiction.

00:06:02.320 | But for now,

00:06:03.160 | let's just talk about the neuroscience of motivation

00:06:05.840 | and reward of pleasure and pain,

00:06:08.320 | because those are central to what we think of as emotions,

00:06:11.340 | whether or not we feel good,

00:06:12.440 | whether or not we feel we're on track in life,

00:06:14.280 | whether or not we feel we're falling behind.

00:06:16.720 | So motivation is fundamental to our daily life.

00:06:20.720 | It's what allows us to get out of bed in the morning.

00:06:22.960 | It's what allows us to pursue long-term goals

00:06:25.320 | or short-term goals.

00:06:26.880 | Motivation and the chemistry of motivation

00:06:30.360 | is tightly wound in with the neurochemistry of movement.

00:06:35.360 | In fact, the same single molecule, dopamine,

00:06:39.080 | is responsible for our sense of motivation

00:06:42.260 | and for movement.

00:06:44.600 | Even though nerves controlling muscles,

00:06:47.600 | so again, these are nerves in the spinal cord or brain

00:06:49.760 | that move our limbs,

00:06:51.620 | the effector chemical there,

00:06:53.480 | the one that actually causes the muscles to twitch,

00:06:55.720 | to contract, is acetylcholine.

00:06:58.080 | In the brain, acetylcholine is responsible for focus.

00:07:00.700 | However, whether or not we move,

00:07:03.060 | whether or not we want to move,

00:07:04.780 | whether or not we have the desire to overcome barriers,

00:07:09.300 | if you know, they could be social barriers

00:07:11.100 | or financial barriers or time constraints,

00:07:13.600 | that depends on this molecule we call dopamine.

00:07:16.060 | It's a fascinating molecule.

00:07:17.880 | And it lies at the center of so many great things in life.

00:07:22.200 | And it lies at the center of so many terrible aspects

00:07:24.980 | of life, namely addiction and certain forms

00:07:27.020 | of mental disease.

00:07:28.640 | So if ever there was a double-edged blade

00:07:31.760 | in the world of neuroscience, it's dopamine.

00:07:34.400 | So let's talk about what dopamine is.

00:07:36.420 | And as always, we are going to talk about actionable tools.

00:07:39.400 | Today, we're definitely going to talk about some things

00:07:41.640 | related to supplementation.

00:07:43.020 | Although you might be surprised to learn

00:07:45.000 | that it's not all just about increasing dopamine.

00:07:47.540 | And in particular, in some cases,

00:07:49.460 | that's the wrong thing to do.

00:07:51.220 | Sometimes it's appropriate, sometimes it's not.

00:07:54.060 | More so, we're going to talk about tools

00:07:56.920 | related to what's called dopamine scheduling,

00:07:59.540 | how the way that you're leading your life

00:08:01.320 | and the way that you're conceptualizing your goals

00:08:03.540 | can actually predict whether or not

00:08:05.620 | you're going to continue to pursue those goals

00:08:08.260 | and therefore whether or not you will succeed

00:08:09.900 | in achieving those goals,

00:08:11.460 | as well as whether or not you will quit.

00:08:14.100 | There's a fundamental relationship

00:08:16.020 | between dopamine released in your brain

00:08:18.320 | and your desire to exert effort.

00:08:20.580 | And you can actually control the schedule

00:08:23.200 | of dopamine release,

00:08:24.140 | but it requires the appropriate knowledge.

00:08:26.580 | This is one of those cases where understanding

00:08:29.020 | the way the dopamine system works

00:08:30.460 | will allow you to leverage it to your benefit.

00:08:32.660 | And if you don't understand the way that dopamine works,

00:08:35.380 | there's a good chance that it's going to pull you out

00:08:38.580 | into the current of life,

00:08:39.860 | meaning the rest of the world

00:08:41.660 | is going to control your dopamine schedules.

00:08:43.840 | So I'm excited to tell you about today's information.

00:08:45.860 | You're going to learn some basic science.

00:08:47.100 | You're going to learn a lot of tools.

00:08:48.500 | And these tools I believe are applicable

00:08:50.240 | whether or not you're five years old, eight years old,

00:08:52.760 | 80 years old or anything in between.

00:08:55.140 | So let's talk about dopamine.

00:08:56.780 | Let's get a few basic facts on the table.

00:08:59.400 | Dopamine was discovered in the late 1950s,

00:09:03.300 | and it was discovered as the precursor,

00:09:06.040 | meaning the thing from which epinephrine

00:09:08.900 | or adrenaline is made.

00:09:10.780 | Now that's fundamentally important

00:09:13.000 | because this molecule we call dopamine nowadays,

00:09:15.840 | we think of as the molecule of reward and pleasure,

00:09:19.620 | but actually it is the substrate

00:09:22.020 | from which adrenaline is made.

00:09:24.280 | And in the brain,

00:09:25.360 | it's the substrate from which epinephrine is made.

00:09:28.060 | Epinephrine is the same thing as adrenaline,

00:09:30.260 | except in the brain we call it epinephrine.

00:09:32.820 | Epinephrine as you may recall from previous podcasts,

00:09:35.520 | or if you haven't, no problem.

00:09:36.880 | Epinephrine allows us to get into action.

00:09:41.020 | It stimulates changes in the blood vessels,

00:09:43.260 | in the heart, in the organs and tissues of the body

00:09:45.540 | that bias us for movement.

00:09:47.900 | And if you'd like to learn more about epinephrine,

00:09:50.140 | you can check out our episode on mastering stress.

00:09:53.780 | We talk a lot about it there.

00:09:55.600 | Dopamine was initially thought to be

00:09:57.260 | just the building block for epinephrine.

00:09:59.260 | And it is indeed the chemical building block

00:10:01.460 | from which epinephrine is made.

00:10:03.660 | However, dopamine does a lot of things on its own.

00:10:06.180 | It's not always converted to epinephrine.

00:10:09.200 | Dopamine is released from several sites

00:10:11.280 | in the brain and body,

00:10:12.700 | but perhaps the most important one for today's discussion

00:10:15.120 | about motivation and reward

00:10:17.040 | is something that's sometimes just called the reward pathway

00:10:20.320 | for the aficionados,

00:10:21.400 | it's sometimes called the mesolimbic reward pathway,

00:10:24.720 | but it's fundamentally important

00:10:26.560 | to your desire to engage in action.

00:10:29.960 | And it's fundamentally important

00:10:32.280 | for people getting addicted to substances or behaviors.

00:10:36.520 | So how does this work?

00:10:37.920 | Well, you've got a structure in the deep part of your brain

00:10:40.740 | called the VTA, it stands for ventral tegmental area.

00:10:44.100 | As always, you don't have to remember these names,

00:10:46.240 | but if you want to, I offer them to you

00:10:48.240 | for further Googling, research, reading, et cetera.

00:10:51.640 | The VTA or ventral tegmental area contains neurons

00:10:55.140 | that send what we call axons, little wires,

00:10:58.480 | that spit out dopamine at a different structure

00:11:01.440 | called the nucleus accumbens.

00:11:03.360 | And those two structures, VTA and nucleus accumbens,

00:11:06.080 | form really the core machinery of the reward pathway

00:11:10.240 | and the pathway that controls your motivation for anything.

00:11:13.880 | You can think of them like an accelerator,

00:11:16.160 | they bias you for action.

00:11:18.740 | However, within the reward pathway, there's also a break.

00:11:22.400 | The break or restriction on that dopamine,

00:11:24.840 | which controls when it's released

00:11:26.440 | and how much it's released is the prefrontal cortex.

00:11:29.560 | The prefrontal cortex is the neural real estate

00:11:31.900 | right behind your forehead.

00:11:33.720 | It's discussed for so many aspects of neuroscience,

00:11:36.160 | you hear about it for decision-making, executive function,

00:11:39.240 | for planning, et cetera.

00:11:40.840 | And indeed it's responsible for a lot of those.

00:11:42.580 | It's this really unique real estate

00:11:44.640 | that we were all endowed with as humans.

00:11:46.740 | Other animals don't have much of it, we have a lot of it.

00:11:49.560 | And that prefrontal cortex acts as a break

00:11:51.880 | on the dopamine system.

00:11:53.360 | Without that break, you would be purely

00:11:56.240 | a pleasure seeking animal.

00:11:58.320 | You would be purely pleasure seeking.

00:12:00.040 | You would have no basis for regulating your behavior

00:12:04.300 | in terms of trying to get things that make you feel good.

00:12:07.760 | And that brings us to the important feature of motivation,

00:12:12.080 | which is that motivation is a two-part process,

00:12:14.860 | which is about balancing pleasure and pain, okay?

00:12:19.060 | Most people think about motivation and reward and dopamine

00:12:21.640 | as just trying to achieve pleasure.

00:12:24.280 | And indeed dopamine is released in the brain from the VTA

00:12:27.840 | at the nucleus accumbens

00:12:29.900 | when we experience things that we like.

00:12:32.540 | So here's the way to conceptualize this.

00:12:34.940 | And if you can internalize this in your mind,

00:12:36.920 | it will really help you as you move through your day

00:12:39.280 | trying to understand why you might be motivated

00:12:41.260 | or not motivated for certain things.

00:12:43.320 | So when you're just sitting around

00:12:44.920 | not doing much of anything,

00:12:46.320 | maybe you wake up in bed in the morning,

00:12:47.720 | you're thinking about getting up or not,

00:12:50.480 | this reward pathway is releasing dopamine

00:12:53.920 | at a rate of about three or four times per second.

00:12:56.880 | It's kind of firing at a low level.

00:12:58.360 | When I say firing, I mean electrical activity in the neurons.

00:13:00.800 | So when you're just around, you feel okay, not depressed,

00:13:03.960 | not highly motivated, not excited,

00:13:06.220 | maybe three or four times a second.

00:13:09.080 | If suddenly you get excited about something,

00:13:11.500 | you anticipate something, not receive an award,

00:13:14.720 | but you get excited in an anticipatory way,

00:13:18.880 | then the rate of firing,

00:13:21.180 | the rate of activity in this reward pathway

00:13:23.520 | suddenly increases to like 30 or 40 times.

00:13:26.840 | And it has the effect of creating a sense of action

00:13:30.400 | or desire to move in the direction

00:13:32.160 | of the thing that you're craving.

00:13:33.680 | In fact, it's fair to say that dopamine is responsible

00:13:37.320 | for wanting and for craving.

00:13:39.360 | And that's distinctly different

00:13:41.160 | from the way that you hear it talked about normally,

00:13:43.240 | which is that it's involved in pleasure.

00:13:44.920 | So yes, dopamine is released in response to sex.

00:13:48.280 | It's released in response to food.

00:13:49.800 | It's released in response to a lot of things,

00:13:52.400 | but it's mostly released in anticipation

00:13:55.280 | and craving for a particular thing.

00:13:57.600 | It has the effect of narrowing our focus

00:14:00.160 | for the thing that we crave.

00:14:02.040 | And that thing could be as simple as a cup of coffee.

00:14:04.240 | It could be as important as a big board meeting.

00:14:07.180 | It could be a big final exam.

00:14:08.480 | It could be the person that we're excited to meet

00:14:10.720 | or see dopamine doesn't care about what you're craving.

00:14:14.440 | It just releases at a particular rate.

00:14:17.240 | In fact, if we just take a step back

00:14:19.200 | and we look at the scientific data

00:14:21.240 | on how much the dopamine firing increases

00:14:25.240 | in response to different things,

00:14:26.560 | you get a pretty interesting window

00:14:28.820 | into how your brain works

00:14:30.660 | and why you might be motivated or not motivated.

00:14:33.300 | Let's say you're hungry

00:14:35.120 | or you're looking forward to a cup of coffee

00:14:37.640 | or you're going to see your partner.

00:14:40.520 | Well, your dopamine neurons are firing at a low rate

00:14:43.720 | until you start thinking about the thing that you want

00:14:46.400 | or the thing that you're looking forward to.

00:14:48.880 | Let's say you're craving chocolate or a good meal,

00:14:51.360 | a steak if you like steak

00:14:53.600 | or a nice plate of pasta if you like pasta.

00:14:56.120 | When you eat that food,

00:14:58.160 | the amount of dopamine that's released

00:14:59.920 | in this reward pathway goes up about 50% above baseline.

00:15:04.040 | The neurons there go from firing

00:15:06.640 | three or four times per second

00:15:08.440 | to six or 10 times per second.

00:15:10.560 | It really depends and these aren't exact numbers

00:15:13.120 | but if we were to measure the amount of dopamine

00:15:15.020 | that's released, it goes up about 50%, all right?

00:15:18.640 | Sex, which is fundamental

00:15:21.540 | to our species continuation and reproduction

00:15:24.760 | although it doesn't have to be for conceiving children,

00:15:27.900 | sex does release dopamine

00:15:30.100 | and it increases dopamine levels about 100%.

00:15:33.040 | So basically doubles them.

00:15:34.460 | Nicotine of the sort that's in cigarettes

00:15:38.160 | or some people are taking nicotine in supplemental form

00:15:41.240 | increases the amount of dopamine about 150% above baseline.

00:15:45.740 | It also does some other things that we're going to talk about

00:15:48.260 | but nicotine does that

00:15:50.600 | and it's kind of interesting that nicotine

00:15:52.100 | would increase the amount of dopamine in your brain

00:15:54.300 | very quickly within seconds.

00:15:57.640 | That's 150 times over baseline

00:16:00.780 | as opposed to sex which is 100% above

00:16:04.380 | or food which is 50%.

00:16:06.940 | Cocaine and amphetamine increase the amount of dopamine

00:16:09.660 | that's released a thousand fold

00:16:11.760 | within about 10 seconds of consuming the drug.

00:16:14.980 | However, just thinking about food, about sex,

00:16:19.000 | about nicotine if you like nicotine

00:16:22.040 | or cocaine or amphetamine

00:16:23.700 | can increase the amount of dopamine that's released

00:16:26.460 | to the same degree as actually consuming the drug.

00:16:30.220 | Now, it depends.

00:16:31.540 | In some cases, for instance, the cocaine user,

00:16:34.140 | the addict that wants cocaine

00:16:36.040 | can't just think about cocaine

00:16:37.880 | and increase the amount that's released about a thousand fold

00:16:40.740 | it's actually much lower

00:16:42.120 | but it's just enough to put them on the motivation track

00:16:44.720 | for it to crave that particular thing.

00:16:47.060 | Now, there are reasons why

00:16:48.260 | you would have brain circuitry like this.

00:16:49.800 | I mean, brain circuitry like this

00:16:51.000 | didn't evolve to get you addicted.

00:16:52.840 | Brain circuitry like this evolved

00:16:56.400 | in order to motivate behaviors toward particular goals,

00:16:59.560 | water when you're thirsty, sex in order to reproduce.

00:17:03.120 | And we're going to talk about the relationship

00:17:04.400 | between estrogen and testosterone in the dopamine system

00:17:06.880 | because those hormones actually bias dopamine to be released.

00:17:10.500 | These things and these brain areas and neurons

00:17:13.780 | were part of the evolutionary history

00:17:16.640 | that led to the continuation of our species.

00:17:19.280 | Things like cocaine and amphetamine

00:17:21.620 | are disastrous for most people

00:17:23.240 | because they release so much dopamine

00:17:25.440 | and they create these closed loops

00:17:27.200 | where people then only crave the particular thing,

00:17:30.360 | cocaine and amphetamine,

00:17:31.680 | that leads to those massive amounts of dopamine release.

00:17:34.480 | Most things don't release that level of dopamine.

00:17:37.840 | Nowadays, there's a ton of interest in social media

00:17:40.740 | and in video games.

00:17:42.340 | And there have been some measurements

00:17:45.080 | of the amount of dopamine released.

00:17:46.760 | Video games, especially video games

00:17:49.000 | that have a very high update speed

00:17:51.040 | where there's novel territory all the time.

00:17:53.280 | Novelty is a big stimulus of dopamine.

00:17:55.700 | Those can release dopamine

00:17:56.960 | somewhere between nicotine and cocaine.

00:17:59.680 | So very high levels of dopamine release.

00:18:02.600 | Social media is an interesting one

00:18:04.700 | because the amount of dopamine that's released

00:18:06.520 | in response to logging onto social media

00:18:08.880 | initially could be quite high,

00:18:10.740 | but it seems likely that there's a taper

00:18:13.400 | in the amount of dopamine,

00:18:14.920 | and yet people still get addicted.

00:18:16.720 | So why?

00:18:17.540 | Why is it that we can get addicted to things

00:18:20.060 | that fail to elicit the same massive amount of pleasure

00:18:23.840 | that they initially did?

00:18:25.520 | Being addicted to something isn't just about

00:18:28.040 | the fact that it feels so good

00:18:29.560 | that you want to do it over and over again.

00:18:31.040 | And that's because of this pleasure pain balance

00:18:34.740 | that underlies motivation.

00:18:36.160 | So let's look a little bit closer

00:18:37.320 | at the pleasure pain balance

00:18:38.480 | because therein lies the tools

00:18:41.000 | for you to be able to control motivation

00:18:42.960 | toward healthy things and avoid motivated behaviors

00:18:45.920 | towards things that are destructive for you.

00:18:48.140 | There are a lot of reasons why people try novel behaviors,

00:18:51.320 | whether or not those are drugs

00:18:52.580 | or whether or not those are adventure thrill-seeking things,

00:18:55.660 | or they seek out new partners,

00:18:57.660 | or they take a new class.

00:18:59.700 | As you'll notice, I'm not placing any judgment

00:19:02.040 | or value on these different behaviors.

00:19:03.880 | Although I think it's fair to point out

00:19:05.540 | that for most people,

00:19:07.220 | addictive drugs like cocaine and amphetamine

00:19:10.880 | are very destructive.

00:19:12.400 | Actually, we know that about 15 to 20% of people

00:19:17.480 | have a genetic bias towards addiction

00:19:20.680 | that you sometimes hear that the first time

00:19:23.700 | that you use a drug, you can become addicted to it.

00:19:26.220 | That's actually not been shown to be true

00:19:28.120 | for most things and most people,

00:19:29.720 | but for some people that actually is true.

00:19:31.640 | And we'll talk a little bit later

00:19:32.960 | about why certain people are heavily biased

00:19:35.760 | toward becoming addicts on the first use

00:19:38.760 | of a particular drug.

00:19:40.020 | It's actually very interesting.

00:19:41.120 | It has everything to do with whether or not

00:19:43.000 | they were formally addicted to something else.

00:19:46.220 | But in any case, the way that addiction works

00:19:49.400 | and the way that motivation works generally

00:19:51.560 | in the non-addictive setting

00:19:53.120 | is that when you anticipate something,

00:19:54.920 | a little bit of dopamine is released.

00:19:56.600 | And then when you reach that thing,

00:19:58.040 | you engage in that thing,

00:20:00.240 | the amount of dopamine goes up even further.

00:20:02.680 | But as you repeatedly pursue a behavior

00:20:05.540 | and you repeatedly engage with a particular thing,

00:20:07.880 | let's say you love running or you love chocolate.

00:20:11.100 | As you eat a piece of chocolate,

00:20:13.560 | believe it or not, it tastes good.

00:20:15.880 | And then there's a shift away from activation of dopamine.

00:20:20.400 | And there are other chemicals that are released

00:20:22.880 | that trigger a low level sense of pain.

00:20:25.760 | Now you might not feel it as physical pain,

00:20:27.760 | but the craving that you feel is both one part dopamine

00:20:32.240 | and one part the mirror image of dopamine,

00:20:34.920 | which is the pain or the craving

00:20:36.860 | for yet another piece of chocolate.

00:20:39.080 | And this is a very important and subtle feature

00:20:41.440 | of the dopamine system that's not often discussed.

00:20:44.400 | People always talk about it just as pleasure.

00:20:46.180 | You love social media, so it gives you dopamine.

00:20:48.820 | And so you engage in that.

00:20:49.680 | You like chocolate, it releases dopamine, so you do that.

00:20:51.960 | But for every bit of dopamine that's released,

00:20:54.460 | there's another circuit in the brain that creates,

00:20:57.160 | you can think of it as kind of like

00:20:58.200 | a downward deflection in pleasure.

00:21:00.240 | So you engage in something you really want,

00:21:02.160 | and there's an increase in pleasure.

00:21:03.640 | And then there's a, without you doing anything,

00:21:07.720 | there's a mirror image of that,

00:21:09.140 | which is a downward deflection in pleasure,

00:21:11.160 | which we're calling pain.

00:21:12.400 | So for every bit of pleasure,

00:21:13.960 | there is a mirror image experience of pain.

00:21:16.820 | And they overlap in time very closely.

00:21:19.180 | So it's sometimes hard to sense this, but try it.

00:21:21.360 | The next time you eat something really delicious,

00:21:23.280 | you'll take a bite, it tastes delicious.

00:21:25.120 | And part of the experience is to want more of that thing.

00:21:28.880 | This is true for any pleasureful experience.

00:21:32.000 | Now, the diabolical part about dopamine

00:21:34.320 | is that because it didn't evolve

00:21:36.600 | in order to get you to indulge

00:21:38.220 | in more and more and more of something,

00:21:40.720 | what happens is that initially,

00:21:44.120 | you experience an increase in pleasure,

00:21:47.460 | and you also experience this increase in pain shortly after

00:21:50.820 | or woven in with the pleasure

00:21:53.040 | that makes you want more of that thing.

00:21:55.040 | But with each subsequent time

00:21:57.840 | that you encounter that thing,

00:21:59.640 | that you pursue the chocolate,

00:22:01.260 | that you pursue the lover,

00:22:04.120 | each time the experience of dopamine release and pleasure

00:22:08.320 | is diminished a little bit.

00:22:10.200 | And the diabolical thing is that the pain response

00:22:14.480 | is increased a little bit.

00:22:16.400 | And this is best observed

00:22:18.120 | in the context of drug seeking behavior.

00:22:20.320 | The first time someone decides to take cocaine or amphetamine,

00:22:24.080 | they may do it out of boredom.

00:22:25.520 | They may do it out of peer pressure.

00:22:27.040 | They may do it to relieve some internal sense.

00:22:29.660 | Maybe they're bored or they're just excited.

00:22:31.280 | Maybe they're high in novelty seeking.

00:22:33.340 | There are a lot of reasons why people might try a drug,

00:22:36.260 | far too many for us to get into or parse here.

00:22:39.860 | Maybe they don't even want to do it,

00:22:40.840 | but someone encourages them.

00:22:42.300 | They will experience a huge dopamine release

00:22:44.720 | and they will feel likely very good.

00:22:47.880 | However, the next time they take it,

00:22:49.240 | it won't feel quite as good.

00:22:50.960 | And it won't feel even as good

00:22:52.400 | the third time or the next time.

00:22:54.420 | But the amount of pain,

00:22:57.200 | the amount of craving that they experience for the drug

00:22:59.880 | will increase over time.

00:23:01.360 | So much of our pursuit of pleasure

00:23:03.340 | is simply to reduce the pain of craving.

00:23:06.640 | So the next time you experience something you really like,

00:23:08.920 | I don't want to take you out of that experience,

00:23:10.580 | but it's really important that you notice this,

00:23:13.480 | that if there's something you really enjoy,

00:23:15.820 | part of that enjoyment is about the anticipation

00:23:19.240 | and wanting of more of that thing.

00:23:21.720 | And that's the pain system in action.

00:23:24.200 | And so we can distinguish between dopamine,

00:23:26.320 | which is really about pleasure,

00:23:27.620 | and dopamine, which is really about motivation

00:23:29.760 | to pursue more in order to relieve or exclude future pain.

00:23:34.760 | Let me repeat that.

00:23:35.840 | Dopamine isn't as much about pleasure

00:23:37.940 | as much as it is about motivation and desire to pursue more

00:23:42.360 | in order to reduce the amount of pain.

00:23:46.080 | And we are now talking about pain as a psychological pain

00:23:49.060 | and a craving,

00:23:49.900 | but people that miss a lover very badly

00:23:53.820 | or that really crave a food very badly

00:23:57.100 | or that are addicted to a drug and can't access it

00:24:01.140 | will experience that as a physical craving

00:24:04.300 | and a mental craving.

00:24:05.360 | The body and brain are linked in this way.

00:24:07.480 | It's almost, they'll describe it as painful.

00:24:09.440 | They yearn for it.

00:24:10.780 | And I think the word yearning

00:24:12.240 | is one that's very valuable in this context

00:24:14.280 | because yearning seems to include a whole body experience

00:24:18.320 | more than just wanting, which could just be up in the mind.

00:24:21.680 | So your desire for something is proportional

00:24:25.320 | to how pleasureful it is to indulge in that thing,

00:24:29.420 | but also how much pain you experience

00:24:31.220 | when you don't have it.

00:24:32.640 | And you can now start to let your mind wander

00:24:35.200 | into all sorts of examples of addictions

00:24:37.020 | or things that you happen to like.

00:24:39.140 | I'll use the example that I sometimes use on here,

00:24:41.080 | which is my love of croissants,

00:24:42.500 | although several of you pointed out

00:24:43.820 | these are called croissants,

00:24:45.260 | but then it sounds like I'm trying to speak French

00:24:46.940 | and I always tried to do that when I was a kid

00:24:48.880 | and I went to a bilingual school and it failed then,

00:24:50.740 | and it's going to fail now.

00:24:51.620 | So I'm going to call them croissants.

00:24:53.680 | They're delicious.

00:24:54.560 | I love them.

00:24:55.400 | A really good one makes me want to eat six.

00:24:58.620 | It's true.

00:24:59.460 | I have pretty good impulse control, I think,

00:25:01.640 | but it makes me want to eat six.

00:25:04.060 | I taste it and it tastes so delicious.

00:25:05.980 | And unless I really force myself

00:25:09.140 | to experience the taste of it in my mouth

00:25:11.460 | and how flaky I'm getting hungry for it right now

00:25:13.400 | and delicious the croissant is,

00:25:15.320 | mostly the taste of that croissant

00:25:17.280 | makes me want to eat more croissants.

00:25:19.200 | Now, eventually blood sugar goes up,

00:25:21.200 | satiety is reached, et cetera.

00:25:22.640 | What happens then?

00:25:23.540 | What is satisfaction and satiety about?

00:25:25.880 | Well, that's a separate neuromodulator.

00:25:27.820 | That's about the neuromodulator serotonin.

00:25:30.520 | It's about oxytocin.

00:25:32.320 | It's about a hormone system

00:25:34.260 | that involves something called prolactin.

00:25:35.820 | So we're going to talk about all of those

00:25:38.220 | in the book, "The Molecule of More," wonderful book.

00:25:40.820 | Those were described as the here and now molecules,

00:25:44.360 | the ones that allow you to experience your sensations

00:25:47.100 | and pleasure in the present

00:25:48.400 | and for which the brain stops projecting into the future.

00:25:51.660 | So now let's talk about craving

00:25:53.580 | and these so-called here and now molecules

00:25:55.980 | and how those engage in a kind of push-pull balance

00:25:59.060 | that will allow you to not just feel more motivated,

00:26:02.240 | but also to enjoy the things in life

00:26:04.460 | that you are pursuing to a much greater degree.

00:26:07.600 | We have neurons in an area of our brain

00:26:09.520 | called the raphe, R-A-P-H-E.

00:26:12.220 | The raphe releases serotonin

00:26:15.160 | at different places in the brain.

00:26:16.740 | Serotonin is the molecule of bliss and contentment

00:26:20.920 | for what you already have.

00:26:22.560 | I've talked before about exteroception.

00:26:25.580 | Exteroception is a focus on the outside world,

00:26:28.380 | everything beyond the confines of your skin.

00:26:31.020 | I've also talked about interoception,

00:26:32.840 | a focus on things that are happening internally

00:26:34.880 | within the confines of your skin.

00:26:37.860 | Dopamine and serotonin can be thought of

00:26:42.760 | as related to exteroception.

00:26:45.200 | Dopamine makes us focused on things outside us

00:26:47.580 | that are beyond what we call our personal space

00:26:50.460 | where we actually have to move and take action

00:26:53.280 | in order to achieve things.

00:26:54.820 | And serotonin in general has to do with the things

00:26:57.620 | that are in our immediate here and now,

00:26:59.320 | hence the description of these

00:27:00.540 | as the here and now molecules.

00:27:02.700 | So it's interesting to point out that the body and the brain

00:27:07.300 | can direct its attention towards things outside us

00:27:10.300 | or inside us or split our attention between those.

00:27:12.480 | I talked about this in a previous podcast,

00:27:14.040 | but if you didn't see it, no problem.

00:27:16.240 | Just understand that dopamine biases us

00:27:18.620 | toward thinking about what we don't have.

00:27:20.780 | Whereas serotonin and some of the related molecules

00:27:23.420 | like the endocannabinoids,

00:27:25.560 | if you picked up on the word cannabinoid,

00:27:27.060 | yes, it's like cannabis because cannabis

00:27:29.820 | attaches to endocannabinoid receptors.

00:27:32.420 | And the endocannabinoids are receptors and chemicals

00:27:35.280 | that the cannabinoids that you naturally make

00:27:37.460 | that are involved in things like forgetting.

00:27:40.080 | It's not a coincidence that pot smokers

00:27:42.180 | don't have the most terrific memory.

00:27:43.700 | You may know a few that have great memories,

00:27:45.480 | but chances are they would have even better memories

00:27:48.080 | if they weren't pot smokers.

00:27:50.240 | But you make these molecules that bind to these receptors

00:27:52.940 | that make you feel kind of blissed out

00:27:54.720 | and content in the present.

00:27:56.760 | Those are receptors that exist in us,

00:27:58.660 | not for sake of consuming THC or marijuana,

00:28:03.100 | but for sake of binding of our natural endogenous cannabinoids.

00:28:07.320 | So you've got these two systems.

00:28:08.520 | They're kind of like a push-pull.

00:28:10.340 | And if you were to say, do the,

00:28:12.840 | in the book, wherever you go, there you are,

00:28:14.820 | Jon Kabat-Zinn talks about this meditation practice

00:28:17.480 | that's different than most meditation practices

00:28:19.460 | where you eat one almond

00:28:21.040 | and you focus all of your attention on the almond,

00:28:23.780 | the taste of the almond, the texture of the almond.

00:28:26.380 | That's really a mindfulness practice

00:28:28.700 | that's geared towards trying to take a behavior

00:28:31.380 | which is normally about pursuit.

00:28:33.640 | Normally feeding is we're going,

00:28:35.780 | we engage in feeding because of dopamine.

00:28:38.040 | We pursue more of a food

00:28:39.220 | because of that pleasure-pain relationship

00:28:40.820 | I talked about before.

00:28:42.140 | The focus on the one almond

00:28:44.500 | or becoming very present in any behavior

00:28:47.320 | that normally would be a kind of

00:28:49.100 | exteroceptive pursuit behavior

00:28:51.340 | and bring it into the here and now,

00:28:53.460 | that's a mental trick or a mental task

00:28:57.980 | that the mindfulness community has really embraced

00:29:00.740 | in order to try and create increased pleasure

00:29:02.980 | for what you already have.

00:29:04.540 | It's really trying to accomplish a shift

00:29:06.740 | from dopamine being released

00:29:08.700 | to serotonin and the cannabinoid system

00:29:11.420 | being involved in that behavior.

00:29:13.480 | So if you're interested in mindfulness

00:29:15.460 | which is something I've talked about before in this podcast

00:29:17.380 | and I sort of made some off the cuff jokes

00:29:20.020 | about the opposite of mindfulness being mindlessness.

00:29:22.480 | Mindfulness is a vast space.

00:29:24.080 | That is a mindful practice

00:29:25.600 | that a lot of people have engaged in.

00:29:26.980 | And indeed it can give you deeper appreciation

00:29:29.620 | for things that you already have.

00:29:31.440 | Dopamine has the quality of making people

00:29:33.740 | kind of rabidly in pursuit of things.

00:29:35.920 | Look at people who are high on cocaine or amphetamine

00:29:38.060 | and they are almost entirely exteroceptive.

00:29:41.080 | Drugs like marijuana, the opioids,

00:29:45.820 | anything that really hits the serotonin system hard

00:29:50.220 | tend to make people rather lethargic

00:29:52.140 | and content to stay exactly where they are.

00:29:53.740 | They don't want to pursue much at all.

00:29:56.020 | Occasionally when people smoke marijuana

00:29:59.460 | or consume THC, their appetite goes way up

00:30:01.680 | and they really want to consume food.

00:30:03.340 | That's because of its effects on insulin

00:30:05.660 | and its effects on blood sugar

00:30:07.140 | which is a slightly separate matter.

00:30:09.020 | But since some of you probably your minds

00:30:11.260 | might've gone to those either experiences

00:30:14.180 | or reports of what pot does, that's why it does that.

00:30:18.220 | So you've got these molecules like dopamine

00:30:20.400 | that make you focused on the things you want

00:30:22.180 | and the things you crave.

00:30:23.220 | And then you've got the molecules

00:30:24.700 | that make you content with what you have.

00:30:26.860 | So the most important thing perhaps

00:30:30.040 | in creating a healthy emotional landscape

00:30:32.940 | is to have a balance

00:30:33.900 | between these two neuromodulator systems.

00:30:36.140 | People that are always in anticipation

00:30:38.300 | and desire and seeking,

00:30:40.360 | that's wonderful for pursuing goals.

00:30:42.740 | However, it's terrible for enjoying life.

00:30:45.180 | And actually those people

00:30:46.000 | are actually quite difficult to be around.

00:30:47.740 | There's a certain almost sociopathic element

00:30:50.420 | to people who are what they call hyper dopaminergic.

00:30:53.140 | People who are always on the dopaminergic scale

00:30:56.140 | to the point where they are always pursuing goals.

00:30:59.300 | In fact, those people are known to be

00:31:01.600 | at least in the psychological spectrum

00:31:03.740 | they can be very manipulative.

00:31:05.540 | Dopamine and the pursuit of something

00:31:07.820 | doesn't necessarily have to be high energy

00:31:10.080 | and intense from the outside

00:31:12.180 | when you observe it from the outside.

00:31:13.640 | In fact, there are people who will manipulate

00:31:16.300 | in order to get what they want.

00:31:17.920 | This has been shown

00:31:19.100 | who have high levels of dopamine release in their brain

00:31:21.220 | but they've learned that a kind of passive manipulation

00:31:24.380 | is the best way to maneuver through a particular environment.

00:31:27.420 | I don't want to focus too much on sociopathy

00:31:29.900 | because those are kind of extreme examples

00:31:32.860 | but it just goes to show that people who identify a goal

00:31:37.460 | and realize the series of steps that they need to take

00:31:39.820 | in order to achieve that goal

00:31:40.980 | can either do it through ethical means or non-ethical means.

00:31:43.580 | They can do it through active pursuit

00:31:45.100 | being the kind of type A person

00:31:46.580 | that's always declaring their goals

00:31:48.060 | and going after it, posting it on Instagram,

00:31:50.060 | telling everybody about it, trying to recruit others.

00:31:53.100 | There's that phenotype.

00:31:54.420 | There's that kind of signature of dopamine.

00:31:57.860 | And then there are the people

00:31:58.920 | that want to get what they want

00:32:00.420 | and they're doing it by always serving other people,

00:32:02.400 | by always taking care of everybody else's needs,

00:32:04.340 | by always trying to accomplish their goals

00:32:07.080 | but through a mode that at least from the outside

00:32:09.800 | seems more passive or more about supporting others.

00:32:13.680 | Neither of these are good or bad

00:32:15.580 | and that's because dopamine is a molecule.

00:32:17.820 | It doesn't care how you reach your goals.

00:32:20.420 | It only cares that you reach your goals

00:32:22.540 | because the internal sensation

00:32:24.740 | is one again of mild pleasure, a little bit of pain,

00:32:29.220 | although more pain over time

00:32:30.680 | if you're not reaching those goals

00:32:32.480 | and it takes you away from the here and now.

00:32:36.380 | So at about this point in the podcast,

00:32:38.200 | I'm guessing that some of you are thinking,

00:32:40.120 | okay, great, I want more dopamine.

00:32:41.820 | I want to be more motivated.

00:32:43.220 | I don't want to procrastinate as much

00:32:45.280 | and I want to be able to experience life.

00:32:47.740 | I want these here and now molecules to be released as well.

00:32:50.760 | Well, there is a way to do that

00:32:52.080 | but you have to understand the source of procrastination

00:32:55.460 | is not one thing.

00:32:57.020 | There are basically two kinds of procrastinators

00:32:59.220 | or so says the research.

00:33:01.300 | The first kind are people that actually really enjoy

00:33:04.520 | the stress of the impending deadline.

00:33:07.740 | It's the only way they can get into action.

00:33:09.560 | These are people that really like the feeling of

00:33:13.380 | something being due in an hour

00:33:15.260 | and how activated and sharp and focused

00:33:17.940 | that makes them feel.

00:33:19.380 | Those people are people that are tapping into

00:33:23.140 | the epinephrine system, the stress system

00:33:25.320 | and for which the stress really tightens their ability

00:33:28.580 | to see, it creates that soda straw view of the world.

00:33:31.620 | It creates an action element in the body

00:33:33.820 | that makes them feel like they want to move.

00:33:35.700 | It really eliminates all the distractions for them.

00:33:39.360 | So they're actually leveraging stress, internal stress

00:33:43.020 | in order to achieve a state

00:33:44.740 | that they can't seem to otherwise achieve.

00:33:47.640 | I won't tell you what to do in order to overcome

00:33:49.780 | all kinds of procrastination

00:33:51.100 | but from a logical perspective, it makes sense therefore

00:33:54.520 | for those kinds of people to think about other ways

00:33:56.780 | that they can get their system into activation.

00:33:58.940 | I've talked about this in previous podcasts

00:34:00.520 | but a couple of those tools might be

00:34:03.000 | the what we've called super oxygenation breathing

00:34:05.300 | which I admit is not always super oxygenating.

00:34:07.700 | So this would be, if you didn't want to consume anything

00:34:11.100 | this could be 25 or 30 cycles of deep inhales and exhales.

00:34:16.100 | It's likely to create some anxiety and low level stress.

00:34:20.000 | If you're someone who's prone to panic attacks

00:34:21.680 | I wouldn't recommend this, but it's pretty straightforward.

00:34:24.300 | It will deploy adrenaline into your system

00:34:26.200 | and you will find that your visual field is focused

00:34:29.020 | and you will be able to work and focus better

00:34:31.660 | than if you just kind of waited around

00:34:33.240 | for some wave of motivation to wash over you.

00:34:37.120 | Normally you're waiting for that deadline to come into sight

00:34:40.020 | and then that's what the stimulus is

00:34:41.840 | but you can self-direct adrenaline release

00:34:43.880 | without ingesting anything.

00:34:45.460 | You can also ingest coffee, caffeine or mate

00:34:49.540 | or something like that

00:34:50.380 | which is what I prefer very often to coffee

00:34:53.440 | which has caffeine.

00:34:54.420 | Caffeine does release dopamine at low levels.

00:34:57.240 | How much it releases dopamine isn't clear.

00:34:59.660 | It seems to increase firing in these neurons

00:35:02.500 | in the nucleus accumbens by about 30%

00:35:04.540 | which is a pretty low level, but it can create agitation.

00:35:07.540 | So for caffeine sensitive people, that could be a problem.

00:35:11.660 | I've talked before about things like L-tyrosine

00:35:14.020 | the precursor to dopamine or Mucuna purines.

00:35:16.860 | I talked about that in the last episode

00:35:18.260 | but if you didn't see that, just to remind you

00:35:19.700 | L-tyrosine is present in red meats, it's in certain nuts

00:35:23.920 | and L-tyrosine is the precursor to dopamine.

00:35:27.280 | You can supplement L-tyrosine if you like

00:35:29.220 | you will get a big inflection in dopamine

00:35:31.200 | but there is a crash associated with it.

00:35:33.100 | However, it will increase motivation in the short term.

00:35:36.940 | Not suggesting anyone do this.

00:35:38.180 | I want to be very clear, say what I always say.

00:35:39.980 | I'm not a doctor, I don't prescribe anything.

00:35:42.060 | I'm a professor, I profess things.

00:35:43.860 | You have to know whether or not these things are appropriate

00:35:46.380 | for your mental and physical health or not.

00:35:48.760 | So you need to consult a doctor.

00:35:50.140 | For instance, people who suffer from schizotypal

00:35:53.180 | or schizophrenia or mania should probably not

00:35:55.700 | be taking supplements that increase their dopamine levels.

00:35:59.020 | Now, if you can't increase your level of focus

00:36:02.780 | and your level of alertness and your level

00:36:04.300 | of motivation using breathing,

00:36:05.980 | well then there might be something else at play.

00:36:08.660 | There are other procrastinators for which they simply

00:36:11.420 | are not releasing enough dopamine.

00:36:12.980 | They're not making enough dopamine.

00:36:15.060 | And for those people, there are a variety of things

00:36:17.660 | that can increase dopamine.

00:36:18.780 | I do suggest you talk to a psychiatrist or doctor.

00:36:21.180 | I've talked about Mucuna purines

00:36:22.700 | which is 99.9% L-DOPA, the precursor to dopamine.

00:36:27.700 | So there are people that do much better

00:36:31.060 | when they take things that increase their dopamine levels.

00:36:34.820 | There are antidepressants like wellbutrin, bupryron

00:36:39.020 | which increase, is the other name for it,

00:36:41.240 | which increase dopamine and epinephrine.

00:36:43.360 | It can increase risk of epileptic attacks

00:36:45.480 | if you're epileptic.

00:36:46.320 | So again, you have to talk to your doctor

00:36:48.180 | but they will increase dopamine and motivation and focus.

00:36:51.520 | However, if you think back to our earlier discussion

00:36:55.360 | about dopamine, dopamine, if it's very high,

00:37:00.360 | creates a sense of pleasure and the desire for more.

00:37:04.040 | So you can also become a person

00:37:06.420 | for which enough is never enough.

00:37:08.860 | The only thing that dopamine really wants

00:37:11.120 | is more of the thing that releases dopamine.

00:37:13.280 | And so big inflections in dopamine,

00:37:15.180 | whether or not they come from cocaine

00:37:16.780 | or whether or not they come

00:37:17.660 | from a supplementation caffeine exercise study regime

00:37:21.540 | will just make you want more of something.

00:37:24.480 | And we've all heard before of growth mindset,

00:37:26.900 | this incredible discovery of my colleague, Carol Dweck

00:37:29.300 | or some of these positive mindsets

00:37:30.900 | that the psychology community has put forth

00:37:32.940 | as really good for pursuit of goals

00:37:35.080 | and pursuit of things that require long bouts of effort.

00:37:38.940 | Well, it's wonderful if you can learn to attach dopamine

00:37:41.860 | to that process psychologically,

00:37:44.120 | but if you're starting to augment the amount of dopamine,

00:37:46.500 | increase the amount of dopamine

00:37:47.760 | through things like supplementation and prescription drugs,

00:37:50.740 | what's going to happen is you're not only going to need

00:37:53.440 | to pursue more and more of the sorts of things

00:37:55.840 | that are associated with the dopamine.

00:37:58.300 | So doing more studying, more sport, more pursuit,

00:38:01.780 | higher mountains, more money, more whatever.

00:38:05.020 | But we know that over time, the mirror image of that,

00:38:09.340 | the pain of lack of accomplishment will also increase.

00:38:12.700 | This is the pleasure pain relationship

00:38:14.420 | that we talked about earlier.

00:38:15.940 | So in a few moments, I'm going to talk about

00:38:17.940 | how to think about healthy dopamine schedules,

00:38:21.100 | but I just want to take a step back for a second

00:38:23.580 | and talk a little bit about the flip side of dopamine.

00:38:26.580 | What happens after this so-called dopamine crash?

00:38:29.560 | What mechanisms are installed in us?

00:38:32.340 | Because believe it or not,

00:38:33.160 | there are mechanisms that are installed in all of us

00:38:35.620 | that really put the complete and total break on dopamine,

00:38:39.100 | why they're there and what they do,

00:38:41.460 | because you've experienced these before,

00:38:43.500 | and there are actually ways that you can navigate them,

00:38:46.620 | these dopamine crashes

00:38:48.500 | or these intentional dopamine suppression mechanisms

00:38:51.340 | in order to leverage healthier dopamine schedules

00:38:54.380 | and to feel more motivated.

00:38:56.240 | Perhaps one of the most fundamental mechanisms in all humans

00:39:00.940 | is the neural circuitry designed for seeking out mates

00:39:04.620 | and for reproduction.

00:39:06.220 | And that's because the continuation of any one species

00:39:09.220 | is the primary driver for any species.

00:39:12.660 | That's just the reality.

00:39:13.960 | Now I'm removing all context here.

00:39:15.700 | So whatever I say, of course,

00:39:17.700 | it's on a backdrop of consensual, age appropriate,

00:39:22.700 | species appropriate, context appropriate, all of that.

00:39:27.260 | This is not about the sociology of reproduction in sex.

00:39:30.120 | This is about the biology.

00:39:31.820 | The biology of sex in males and females,

00:39:35.420 | it doesn't matter if it's XX chromosome, XY chromosome,

00:39:38.400 | XXY, XYY, it doesn't matter.

00:39:41.380 | The reality is that dopamine is released on anticipation

00:39:45.780 | and consummation of sex and reproduction.

00:39:48.900 | And after orgasm, regardless of chromosomal background,

00:39:53.820 | there's a dramatic decrease in dopamine

00:39:57.140 | and an increase in a hormone called prolactin.

00:40:00.140 | Now, prolactin is associated with milk letdown

00:40:02.980 | in lactating mothers.

00:40:05.320 | It's also present in males.

00:40:08.100 | And in general, prolactin creates a sense of lethargy,

00:40:11.740 | of stillness and lack of desire to move

00:40:14.540 | and lack of desire to pursue more

00:40:16.500 | of whatever released the dopamine.

00:40:18.940 | Prolactin in fact sets the refractory period

00:40:21.760 | on a male's ability to mate again.

00:40:25.120 | Now, this is going to vary tremendously

00:40:27.300 | from individual to individual.

00:40:28.880 | There are data showing that it can vary tremendously

00:40:33.180 | from mate pairing to mate pairing.

00:40:35.340 | The number one thing that releases dopamine is novelty.

00:40:39.220 | And it is true that the refractory period is shortened

00:40:42.960 | by the introduction of novel mates.

00:40:44.820 | This was first shown in a kind of classic experiment

00:40:47.700 | of all things in chickens.

00:40:50.520 | This is called the Coolidge effect.

00:40:52.480 | And the story is, the story goes,

00:40:54.940 | and I believe it's a true story.

00:40:56.140 | It's actually in all the neuroendocrinology textbooks.

00:40:58.820 | So I believe it's true, is that President Calvin Coolidge

00:41:02.180 | was visiting a chicken farm.

00:41:05.820 | They were just being taken around.

00:41:07.700 | And the person who was hosting the visit

00:41:10.540 | showed them a rooster.

00:41:12.500 | That was Coolidge and his wife were on the visit.

00:41:15.140 | And said, this rooster copulates thousands of times per day.

00:41:20.620 | And Mrs. Coolidge apparently kind of elbowed

00:41:23.860 | President Coolidge and said, you hear that?

00:41:25.840 | Kind of like pointing out the prowess of this rooster.

00:41:29.000 | And Coolidge said, yeah, but let me ask you a question,

00:41:32.560 | same hen or different hens?

00:41:34.560 | It turns out it was different hens.

00:41:36.320 | And the reason is the introduction of a novel mate

00:41:38.700 | increases dopamine levels.

00:41:40.920 | And what's interesting about this is that after copulation,

00:41:45.920 | prolactin goes through the roof

00:41:47.640 | and prevents further copulation.

00:41:49.800 | Dopamine crashes.

00:41:51.960 | But the introduction of some sort of novelty shortens this.

00:41:55.180 | Now, this is not a ploy for people to change mates often.

00:42:00.180 | What this is is a story about the dopamine

00:42:03.140 | and prolactin system that also exists in humans.

00:42:06.380 | Now, there are actually things that people

00:42:09.380 | in certain communities take in order to bypass

00:42:12.340 | these refractory periods.

00:42:13.340 | There's actually drugs that increase dopamine,

00:42:16.520 | suppress prolactin and vice versa.

00:42:19.020 | There's actually another way to suppress prolactin.

00:42:21.780 | Vitamin B6 is a fairly potent prolactin inhibitor

00:42:26.780 | as is zinc.

00:42:28.140 | And if you look out there in the literature

00:42:29.900 | and for those of you that are in the wellness

00:42:31.120 | and kind of sports performance community,

00:42:32.700 | a lot of the so-called quote unquote testosterone boosters

00:42:36.840 | are actually combinations of vitamin B6 and zinc

00:42:40.880 | which inhibit prolactin.

00:42:42.420 | And by way of inhibiting prolactin increase dopamine.

00:42:45.900 | So they do have some functional effect in that regard.

00:42:49.980 | They're not really increasing testosterone directly.

00:42:51.900 | They're suppressing prolactin levels.

00:42:54.540 | And there are clinical conditions like hyperprolactinemia

00:42:57.420 | which leads to massive decreases in libido, et cetera.

00:43:01.300 | And there are prescription drugs

00:43:02.760 | to treat hyperprolactinemia, which of course,

00:43:06.140 | you should always talk to an endocrinologist

00:43:07.700 | about those sorts of prescription drugs.

00:43:09.780 | So it's interesting that this very basic mechanism

00:43:12.660 | of dopamine and prolactin, this sort of motivation,

00:43:15.500 | no, no more motivation is a system

00:43:18.300 | that evolved for reproduction first

00:43:20.140 | but that actually takes place.

00:43:21.860 | And you can see elsewhere in the world.

00:43:25.100 | For instance, schizophrenia,

00:43:27.740 | a disease that has many different types and facets

00:43:30.760 | but schizophrenia is a case of often of hyperactivation

00:43:35.260 | of the dopamine system.

00:43:37.060 | So much so that it can make people feel kind of high.

00:43:39.600 | They hallucinate.

00:43:40.460 | I mean, we're talking very, very high

00:43:42.180 | or dysregulated dopamine circuits in the brain.

00:43:46.220 | One of the treatments for schizophrenia

00:43:49.780 | are drugs that block dopamine receptors.

00:43:52.760 | And if you have the, it's unfortunate,

00:43:55.620 | there are so many people that are out on the street

00:43:57.460 | these days who have schizophrenia,

00:43:59.140 | some of whom are taking their meds, some of whom aren't.

00:44:01.800 | If you ever see somebody on the street

00:44:04.100 | that's doing what's, it's like a lip smacking and writhing,

00:44:07.380 | it's actually called tardive dyskinesia.

00:44:09.820 | This is a movement disorder

00:44:12.700 | that's created by taking these anti-dopaminergic drugs.

00:44:16.300 | So you can imagine these anti-dopaminergic drugs

00:44:18.920 | while being very effective in suppressing hallucinations,

00:44:21.220 | they create these movement problems

00:44:23.340 | because of dopamine's importance for the movement circuitry,

00:44:27.580 | so-called pyramidal circuitry for the aficionados.

00:44:30.100 | In addition, you sometimes see in males

00:44:32.940 | that take these drugs, drugs like haloperidol

00:44:35.660 | and the other dopamine blockers,

00:44:37.920 | that they actually develop breast tissue,

00:44:39.460 | gynecomastia.

00:44:41.060 | So the development of male breast tissue

00:44:43.500 | is because of the elevated levels of prolactin

00:44:46.140 | because they're suppressing their dopamine so much.

00:44:48.540 | Now that's a really extreme case,

00:44:50.060 | but maybe perhaps if you see somebody

00:44:53.740 | engaging in these very strange kind of face writhing

00:44:56.100 | and body writhing behaviors,

00:44:57.700 | that's actually not a consequence of their mental illness,

00:45:00.060 | that's a consequence most often of the drugs

00:45:03.160 | that they're taking to treat the mental illness,

00:45:04.980 | those are side effects of those drugs.

00:45:07.080 | Now, prolactin is increased anytime

00:45:09.740 | we have some really heightened, intense experience,

00:45:12.340 | it's not just released after sex and reproduction,

00:45:15.740 | prolactin is released after some major event,

00:45:19.240 | it's actually responsible,

00:45:20.800 | it's thought for some of postpartum depression

00:45:24.440 | for different types of kind of the letdown, the low.

00:45:27.160 | I can distinctly remember that after finals

00:45:30.080 | or after publishing a big paper,

00:45:33.340 | I would be very, very happy,

00:45:34.760 | but then I'd find that, oh, like what next?

00:45:37.740 | Or things might seem a little bit dimmed or dulled out

00:45:40.300 | for the next day or so or the following week.

00:45:42.560 | The timescales on these are going to vary

00:45:43.940 | because some people release a lot of dopamine

00:45:45.900 | for a very long time in response to something great

00:45:48.620 | and other people have a quick inflection of dopamine

00:45:51.660 | and then they're back to feeling not so great,

00:45:53.360 | it really varies from person to person.

00:45:55.440 | In fact, long ago,

00:45:57.680 | as I learned about dopamine reward circuitry

00:45:59.820 | and the relationship between dopamine and prolactin,

00:46:02.860 | I started to leverage this, believe it or not,

00:46:05.340 | after some major event,

00:46:07.060 | I would take a couple hundred milligrams of vitamin B6.

00:46:11.860 | I think for people who have diabetic neuropathy,

00:46:14.020 | you need to be careful with vitamin B6,

00:46:16.140 | check with your doctor.

00:46:17.060 | I was told, although I haven't found the literature on this,

00:46:19.860 | that it can in some cases exacerbate peripheral neuropathy,

00:46:24.020 | but for most people, it's thought to be reasonably safe,

00:46:28.320 | but again, always check with your physician,

00:46:31.000 | but I would take some B6 to kind of offset some of that low

00:46:34.220 | and actually, I don't know if it was subjective or not,

00:46:36.080 | but it seemed to have somewhat of a positive effect.

00:46:40.300 | I also started just internalizing the fact

00:46:43.060 | that dopamine is so subjective.

00:46:44.900 | There are objective aspects to dopamine

00:46:47.200 | and how much is released,

00:46:48.500 | but there's also some subjective effects to dopamine

00:46:51.540 | and so one of the things that you can do

00:46:53.580 | in order to generally just be a happier person,

00:46:56.180 | especially if you're a person in pursuit of long-term goals

00:46:58.700 | of any kind is the longer that you can extend

00:47:02.900 | that positive phase of the dopamine release

00:47:05.660 | and the more that you can blunt the pain response to that,

00:47:09.460 | the better and you can actually do this cognitively.

00:47:11.460 | I used to joke with my lab that when we'd publish a paper,

00:47:14.740 | I would get really excited,

00:47:16.340 | but I wouldn't allow myself to get too excited.

00:47:18.660 | What I wanted to do instead

00:47:19.820 | and what I've still tried to do is try and extend the arc

00:47:23.100 | of that positive experience as long as I possibly can

00:47:25.840 | simply by thinking back like, oh, that was really cool.

00:47:27.880 | I really enjoyed doing that work.

00:47:29.260 | I really enjoyed the discovery.

00:47:31.500 | I really enjoyed doing that with the people

00:47:33.280 | that I was working with at the time.

00:47:35.480 | What a pleasure that was.

00:47:37.060 | I can get this very easily from pictures of people

00:47:39.240 | and things like Costello that I really enjoy,

00:47:41.680 | trips that I've taken.

00:47:42.960 | So you can extend pleasure without having to engage

00:47:45.560 | in the behavior over and over.

00:47:47.540 | That's extending the arc of that dopamine release.

00:47:50.300 | As well, it offsets some of the pain

00:47:52.660 | of not having that experience occur

00:47:55.880 | over and over and over again.

00:47:57.460 | Now for the high performers out there,

00:47:59.000 | you're probably familiar with this.

00:48:00.600 | Many people who have a big achievement,

00:48:02.340 | their first thoughts are, well, now what?

00:48:04.260 | What am I going to do next?

00:48:05.220 | How am I ever going to exceed that?

00:48:06.420 | And indeed many people who are very high

00:48:09.020 | on this kind of dopamine sensation

00:48:10.700 | and novelty seeking scale are prone to addiction.

00:48:13.780 | They're prone to the rabid pursuit of external goals,

00:48:16.620 | of exteroception to the neglect of these internal mechanisms

00:48:20.200 | that allow them to feel calm and happy.

00:48:22.260 | So for people that are very driven, very motivated,

00:48:26.320 | adopting a practice of being able to engage

00:48:28.440 | in the here and now, the sort of almond type practices

00:48:31.000 | we talked about earlier of learning how to achieve

00:48:34.860 | a really good night's sleep on a regular basis

00:48:37.200 | through tools and mechanisms I talked about

00:48:39.240 | in previous podcasts gives a sort of balance

00:48:42.000 | to the pleasure seeking and offsetting of pain

00:48:45.800 | and the pleasure in the here and now.

00:48:47.840 | So pleasure is really two things.

00:48:49.520 | It's a joy in pursuit,

00:48:52.560 | but it's also the joy in what you have.

00:48:55.560 | And there's a beautiful model of emotional development

00:48:58.880 | that was developed by Alan Shore,

00:49:00.560 | a professor at UCLA and psychiatrist

00:49:02.640 | that talks about some of the basics

00:49:04.840 | of good infant parent attachment,

00:49:07.600 | where good parenting that leads

00:49:09.700 | to healthy adult relationships and emotion regulation

00:49:14.120 | tends to include both sides

00:49:16.240 | of this dopamine serotonin spectrum.

00:49:19.480 | You talk about the relationship between child

00:49:21.800 | and parent typically was the mother, but also father,

00:49:24.840 | where you can get the child really excited

00:49:27.340 | by kind of squealing and ramping them up

00:49:29.080 | or talking about something or ice cream or play.

00:49:31.320 | And the kid gets very excited.

00:49:32.720 | That's the dopaminergic system,

00:49:34.080 | the anticipation of something that's coming,

00:49:36.600 | but as well, engaging with children in a way

00:49:39.380 | that's really about everything that you have

00:49:41.040 | right in the here and now, the reading of the book,

00:49:43.640 | the kids always seem to ask one more time, one more,

00:49:46.900 | they seem to want more of the things that they enjoy,

00:49:49.000 | but really engaging with them in a way

00:49:51.860 | that increases their sense of pleasure

00:49:54.080 | for what's right there,

00:49:55.480 | as well as giving them a lot of things

00:49:57.000 | to be excited about and positive anticipation.

00:50:00.360 | Now, having worked years ago with at-risk kids

00:50:04.000 | and also with young kids at summer camps

00:50:05.900 | and things like that, one of the things that you learn

00:50:08.200 | is you never say maybe to a kid about a reward.

00:50:11.500 | If you say we might have ice cream later,

00:50:13.480 | you are essentially saying we are having ice cream.

00:50:16.000 | They don't hear the maybe part.

00:50:17.400 | And it turns out adults don't either.

00:50:19.860 | It's really interesting.

00:50:20.720 | There's something called reward prediction error.

00:50:22.940 | I've talked about this before,

00:50:24.080 | but I haven't really talked about it deeply

00:50:26.140 | in the context of the dopamine system.

00:50:28.300 | Dopamine, as I've said, is involved in anticipation

00:50:31.240 | of wanting, not of having.

00:50:33.420 | It's involved in motivation toward the thing that you want,

00:50:36.340 | and it biases us towards action.

00:50:38.360 | Reward prediction error equals the actual amount of dopamine

00:50:42.640 | that's released in response to something

00:50:44.480 | versus minus the amount that's expected, okay?

00:50:48.160 | So if you tell a kid we might have ice cream,

00:50:51.500 | they hear we're going to have ice cream, and they expect it.

00:50:54.520 | And if you later say, well,

00:50:56.760 | we're not going to have ice cream, and I said maybe,

00:50:59.640 | that's actually going to lead

00:51:00.660 | to a much bigger crash in dopamine.

00:51:03.680 | It's going to lead to a negative signal, a punishment signal.

00:51:07.540 | It's literally going to feel like pain.

00:51:09.760 | So kids, you can leverage this.

00:51:12.260 | If your parents say maybe,

00:51:13.500 | they're effectively telling your dopamine system absolutely.

00:51:16.660 | Now, adults are like this too.

00:51:18.160 | If we think something might happen and it doesn't happen,

00:51:21.760 | there's a big crash in our affect, in our emotionality.

00:51:25.440 | And that's because that dopamine system goes from firing

00:51:27.680 | about three to four times per second

00:51:29.600 | to about 10 or 15 times per second

00:51:31.920 | in the possibility that something might happen.

00:51:34.660 | Possibility is deeply woven into our biology

00:51:37.740 | of the dopamine and motivation system

00:51:40.120 | as a way for us, presumably in ancient times,

00:51:43.320 | to explore novel territories and get a sense

00:51:45.640 | that maybe there's water there.

00:51:46.920 | Maybe there are mates there.

00:51:48.360 | Maybe there's better food there.

00:51:49.640 | Maybe there's resources there.

00:51:51.440 | The maybe is an important thing that in language terms,

00:51:55.860 | maybe means maybe, but in neurobiological terms,

00:51:59.360 | maybe means perhaps there's going to be the surprise

00:52:02.500 | of an even bigger dopamine reward.

00:52:04.800 | And the one thing dopamine loves

00:52:06.360 | more than anything else is surprise.

00:52:09.520 | When we get something positive, we go to the mailbox,

00:52:12.200 | we're expecting some bills and you open it up

00:52:14.120 | and you get a letter from somebody

00:52:15.400 | you haven't thought about in a long time

00:52:16.920 | and you adore that person, that's a huge dopamine release.

00:52:21.300 | It actually triggers neuroplasticity.

00:52:22.800 | You probably never forget that

00:52:24.040 | because of the way that dopamine gates plasticity.

00:52:27.480 | When we get a surprise of something that we didn't want,

00:52:32.160 | also it creates plasticity.

00:52:34.520 | So the surprise, novelty, motivation, and reward,

00:52:38.080 | they're all woven into this package that we call dopamine.

00:52:41.440 | And the cool thing is you can actually regulate

00:52:44.520 | this whole system in a way that will steer you

00:52:48.800 | or lean you towards more positive anticipation

00:52:51.560 | of things in life and less disappointment.

00:52:53.560 | It's simply a matter of adjusting

00:52:55.120 | what we call the dopamine schedule.

00:52:57.560 | Okay, a couple of things before we continue.

00:52:59.960 | We're going to talk about attention deficit

00:53:01.700 | in a few minutes, but before that,

00:53:03.280 | I want to talk about something that I've mentioned before

00:53:05.740 | in previous podcasts, but that you may not be aware of.

00:53:10.360 | And if you're aware of, you may still be doing,

00:53:13.760 | which is severely injuring your ability to release dopamine.

00:53:18.160 | It's creating a sense of disappointment

00:53:20.660 | in ways that are most likely hurting you

00:53:23.160 | mentally and physically.

00:53:24.240 | And that's the blunting of dopamine

00:53:27.440 | by viewing light in the middle of the night.

00:53:30.400 | I realize this is not a discussion

00:53:31.800 | about sleep and circadian rhythms,

00:53:33.200 | but the data now are so strong showing

00:53:35.440 | that viewing bright light from about 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.,

00:53:40.320 | too often triggers activation of this circuit

00:53:43.680 | called the habenula.

00:53:44.940 | So this is I to, it goes from your retina

00:53:47.280 | to a structure called the habenula, H-A-B-E-N-U-L-A.

00:53:51.080 | Then from the habenula to some of this reward circuitry

00:53:53.960 | and it suppresses the activation of the reward circuitry,

00:53:57.280 | not just in that moment,

00:53:58.800 | but to things that you normally

00:54:00.360 | positively anticipate and pursue.

00:54:02.960 | And the reason I'm bringing this up now

00:54:04.160 | is because I haven't really gone into depth

00:54:05.560 | on the dopamine system before.

00:54:06.720 | Now you understand you have this very precious reward system

00:54:09.780 | that's kind of a double-edged sword.

00:54:11.860 | It needs to be taken care of and treated well.

00:54:14.320 | You want to use it, but not overuse it, et cetera.

00:54:17.440 | But getting bright light exposure in the middle of the night

00:54:20.240 | is reducing your capacity to release dopamine.

00:54:23.160 | So it's not just about the sleep

00:54:24.440 | that you're not getting in that time.

00:54:25.760 | It's also that you're not getting the dopamine

00:54:29.480 | that would otherwise be available to you.

00:54:31.220 | So you're actually taking,

00:54:32.680 | think of light in the middle of the night

00:54:34.580 | as a kind of antagonist,

00:54:36.000 | as kind of a blocker of dopamine.

00:54:37.880 | Maybe that'll help you.

00:54:39.240 | If you're somebody who has to work

00:54:40.340 | in the middle of the night

00:54:41.300 | and you want to bypass this dopamine suppression,

00:54:43.980 | please see the episode about jet lag and shift work,

00:54:46.480 | because there are a lot of tips there

00:54:47.560 | that will allow you to do that.

00:54:49.000 | In order to understand how to control the dopamine system,

00:54:51.640 | how to leverage it for a better life,

00:54:53.940 | you need to understand the results

00:54:56.720 | of a very important experiment.

00:54:58.480 | This experiment was able to separate pleasure

00:55:03.620 | from motivation.

00:55:05.000 | It's a very simple, but like many simple experiments,

00:55:08.560 | a very elegant experiment.

00:55:10.840 | What they did,

00:55:11.680 | and this has now been done in animals and in humans,

00:55:15.080 | they offered rats food.

00:55:17.200 | It was a food that they particularly liked.

00:55:19.640 | And the animals would lever press for a pellet of food,

00:55:22.380 | kind of classic experiment.

00:55:23.680 | They'd eat the food and they presumably liked the food

00:55:26.980 | because they were motivated to press the lever and eat it.

00:55:30.080 | Great.

00:55:31.040 | They took other rats.

00:55:32.440 | They eliminated the dopamine neurons.

00:55:35.780 | You can do this by injection of a neurotoxin

00:55:37.780 | that destroys these neurons.

00:55:39.540 | So they actually had no dopamine in their brain.

00:55:41.800 | They have no ability to release dopamine.

00:55:44.360 | And they gave them a lever.

00:55:46.800 | The rats would sit there and they'd hit the lever

00:55:48.480 | and they'd eat the food.

00:55:49.400 | They're still enjoyed the food.

00:55:51.680 | So you say, well, okay,

00:55:53.580 | so dopamine isn't involved in motivation

00:55:55.480 | and it isn't involved in pleasure.

00:55:56.840 | No, it absolutely is.

00:55:58.880 | They could still enjoy the food,

00:56:01.120 | but if they moved the rat literally one body length

00:56:04.860 | away from the lever,

00:56:06.620 | what they found was the animals that had dopamine

00:56:08.680 | would move over to the lever, press it and eat.

00:56:10.760 | And the ones,

00:56:11.720 | the rats that did not have dopamine available to them

00:56:14.580 | wouldn't even move one body length, one rat length

00:56:19.080 | to the lever in order to press it and get the food.

00:56:22.020 | Dopamine therefore is not about

00:56:24.560 | the ability to experience pleasure.

00:56:26.760 | It is about motivation for pleasure.

00:56:29.840 | This has been repeated in humans

00:56:31.780 | in a variety of different scenarios.

00:56:33.740 | You can't really do the lever press thing quite as easily,

00:56:36.640 | but we know that people that have low levels of dopamine

00:56:40.820 | are simply less motivated

00:56:42.600 | even though they can achieve pleasure.

00:56:44.480 | And this has serious ramifications

00:56:46.800 | for the fact that now quote unquote pleasure

00:56:51.400 | or ways to induce things that we believe give us pleasure

00:56:55.640 | are everywhere and they're within reach.

00:56:57.520 | We don't have to forage for our food.

00:56:59.000 | There's a lot of highly processed, high sugar, high fat,

00:57:03.360 | foods, there's also foods that are healthy that tastes good

00:57:06.080 | but they're, and hopefully they're pretty easy to get

00:57:08.320 | all that different people have different access

00:57:10.320 | to things of course.

00:57:11.840 | But dopamine isn't about the ability to experience pleasure.

00:57:15.420 | It's about how motivated you are to reach those pleasures.

00:57:19.420 | And so many of you are probably thinking,

00:57:21.500 | wow, I'm not a very motivated person.

00:57:23.420 | Like you talked about

00:57:24.260 | the one kind of procrastination earlier.

00:57:25.620 | What about when I just feel kind of meh about life?

00:57:28.880 | Now, for some of you,

00:57:30.160 | there may be a real clinical depression

00:57:31.760 | and you should talk to a professional.

00:57:33.200 | There are very good prescription drugs

00:57:35.680 | that can really help people.

00:57:37.360 | There's also great non-drug treatments of psychotherapy

00:57:41.520 | and other treatments that are being developed

00:57:43.800 | in addition to psychotherapy

00:57:45.020 | and the various kinds of psychoanalysis, et cetera

00:57:47.600 | that one can use.

00:57:48.860 | I think the data really points to the fact

00:57:50.380 | that a combination of pharmacology and talk therapies

00:57:54.740 | are generally best.

00:57:55.680 | And there are a huge range of these things.

00:57:57.260 | I know many of you are in these professions.

00:57:58.800 | We're not going to talk about that right now.

00:58:00.600 | There is a compound that's kind of interesting

00:58:02.600 | in the supplement space

00:58:03.640 | that isn't Mucuna purines L-DOPA.

00:58:06.600 | It's not L-tyrosine.

00:58:08.520 | That isn't promoting massive releases of dopamine

00:58:12.520 | or even dopamine alone,

00:58:14.420 | but a combination of dopamine and serotonin.

00:58:17.000 | And it's an intriguing molecule.

00:58:18.800 | It's sold over the counter.

00:58:20.480 | Again, you have to check with your healthcare provider

00:58:24.060 | before you would take anything or remove anything.

00:58:26.080 | That's very important.

00:58:28.320 | But it's phenylethylamine or PEA.

00:58:33.320 | PEA or beta phenylethylamine releases dopamine at low levels

00:58:39.900 | but also serotonin at low level.

00:58:44.600 | So it's kind of a cocktail of the motivation molecules

00:58:48.560 | as well as the quote unquote here and now molecules.

00:58:51.720 | And people's response to this varies widely

00:58:55.600 | but many people report feeling heightened sense

00:58:58.800 | of mental acuity, wellbeing, et cetera.

00:59:01.200 | It is a bit of a stimulant

00:59:02.920 | like anything that triggers activation

00:59:04.520 | of the dopamine and norepinephrine pathway

00:59:06.720 | but it is an interesting supplement.

00:59:08.080 | I actually haven't tried it before.

00:59:10.620 | So I can't report on my own experiences.

00:59:12.240 | I will point you however, to examine.com.

00:59:15.940 | It wouldn't be a Huberman Lab podcast episode

00:59:17.920 | if I didn't point you to examine.com

00:59:19.420 | this incredible free resource

00:59:21.180 | where you can put in any supplement

00:59:23.000 | and it will tell you the quote unquote

00:59:24.220 | human effect matrix.

00:59:25.480 | It'll point you to the various studies.

00:59:27.200 | We always provide a link to this in the caption.

00:59:29.000 | It's an amazing resource.

00:59:30.640 | So you can go there to explore more

00:59:32.880 | but I haven't talked about beta phenylethylamine before

00:59:37.880 | in previous podcasts.

00:59:39.000 | And I wanted to add it to the list of things

00:59:41.920 | that tap into the dopamine system that are in this

00:59:46.020 | I guess we call it now the supplementation space.

00:59:49.280 | I personally am fascinated by these supplements

00:59:52.340 | and the things that exist out there

00:59:54.200 | that are non-prescription that seem to

00:59:57.360 | at least in some people have positive effects.

01:00:00.280 | For instance, last episode,

01:00:01.400 | we talked about acetyl-l-carnitine

01:00:03.360 | which there are several papers

01:00:05.320 | that report antidepressant effects

01:00:06.880 | as well as positive effects on other things,

01:00:08.960 | sperm health, ovarian health, et cetera.

01:00:12.040 | I learned from a colleague that acetyl-l-carnitine in Europe

01:00:15.640 | is actually a prescription drug.

01:00:16.920 | In the US it's sold over the counter.

01:00:19.120 | So I guess depending on where you're listening to this

01:00:20.880 | the availability might vary.

01:00:22.800 | And as always, I put the caveat

01:00:24.280 | you have to check with your healthcare provider

01:00:25.760 | if it's right for you.

01:00:26.600 | But I'm fascinated by the fact that these things exist

01:00:29.880 | and that they lie somewhere between

01:00:32.600 | prescription drugs and doing nothing.

01:00:34.780 | And that makes them interesting compounds.

01:00:37.040 | And I think that PEA, beta phenylethylamine

01:00:40.960 | is yet another one of such compounds.

01:00:44.500 | I'm going to talk a lot about attention deficit

01:00:48.620 | and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

01:00:50.860 | in a future episode.

01:00:52.220 | But I do want to mention it today

01:00:53.600 | in the context of dopamine and impulsivity.

01:00:57.020 | So ADHD or ADD,

01:00:58.980 | so attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,

01:01:01.820 | ADD are clinical diagnoses.

01:01:03.740 | I think a lot of people nowadays walk around

01:01:05.840 | and say, I have ADD or you have ADD.

01:01:08.980 | And indeed one can create a sort of ADD

01:01:12.380 | by attention switching all the time.

01:01:14.780 | I'm a big fan of Cal Newport.

01:01:16.600 | He wrote the book "Deep Work."

01:01:18.520 | I believe he was the one who said

01:01:20.540 | context switching is terrible for the brain.

01:01:22.980 | It's like the worst thing for the brain

01:01:24.620 | because then the brain learns to context switch

01:01:27.280 | and real deep work, productivity,

01:01:29.860 | learning of all kinds,

01:01:31.180 | good relationships of all kinds

01:01:32.560 | really come from depth of experience,

01:01:34.380 | not from breadth of experience within the moment.

01:01:38.320 | And so I think it's important to know

01:01:40.780 | that there's clinical ADHD and ADD.

01:01:43.400 | And then there's the kind that people are kind of inducing

01:01:46.800 | and through distraction and social media and phones, et cetera

01:01:51.480 | and those can sometimes lead to clinical ADHD and ADD.

01:01:56.480 | But I want to talk about ADHD and ADD in kids just briefly.

01:02:01.920 | The drugs that are normally given to treat those conditions,

01:02:06.040 | ADHD and ADD are things like Adderall,

01:02:09.800 | things that have very amphetamine like qualities

01:02:12.600 | and structures.

01:02:13.680 | And you might ask, why would they do that?

01:02:17.540 | Well, it turns out that in kids,

01:02:20.040 | these activate that forebrain circuitry,

01:02:22.660 | the break that exists on the deeper mesolimbic circuitry.

01:02:27.500 | So as you recall, there's the VTA and nucleus accumbens,

01:02:29.760 | that's the kind of accelerators on dopamine.

01:02:31.600 | And then there's the prefrontal cortex,

01:02:32.940 | which acts as a break and can limit impulsivity.

01:02:36.120 | And those drugs tend to increase the activity of neurons

01:02:39.240 | in that pathway, the prefrontal cortex,

01:02:41.440 | and it reduces impulsivity.

01:02:42.920 | In fact, there's a experiment described in the book,

01:02:45.800 | "The Molecule of More," which is really interesting,

01:02:48.180 | where they looked at impulsivity in obese children.

01:02:51.720 | And it turns out, they did this experiment in a safe way,

01:02:55.400 | that they looked at kids, both obese kids and non-obese kids

01:03:00.160 | and their willingness to cross a very busy highway.

01:03:03.700 | And it turns out that the obese kids got hit by cars

01:03:06.440 | more often than non-obese children.

01:03:09.600 | It turns out this was a virtual reality experiment

01:03:11.880 | that had nothing to do with the fact that they were obese

01:03:13.880 | or limitations on movement or speed of movement.

01:03:16.640 | It was that the obese children were more impulsive

01:03:18.900 | in a variety of contexts,

01:03:20.120 | not just in this virtual crossing the street thing.

01:03:22.660 | And it turns out the data points to the fact

01:03:25.560 | that impulsivity at age 10 is actually predictive

01:03:29.160 | of overeating disorders at a later stage in life.

01:03:32.940 | So some of these drugs that are designed

01:03:35.140 | to create heightened activity in the braking system,

01:03:38.440 | the decelerator of the reward pathway

01:03:42.140 | are designed to reduce impulsivity

01:03:44.080 | because they suppress the release of dopamine

01:03:46.480 | and they allow, hopefully they allow children

01:03:50.000 | and when they become adults,

01:03:52.140 | to better control the schedule of dopamine release.

01:03:55.680 | So now let's talk about what is a dopamine schedule

01:03:57.880 | and how you can leverage this

01:04:00.000 | in order to have heightened levels of motivation,

01:04:02.880 | but not get so much dopamine that you're experiencing

01:04:05.160 | or crash afterwards.

01:04:06.540 | And also so that you can experience heightened pleasure

01:04:09.100 | from the various pursuits that you are engaged in in life.

01:04:12.520 | I know many of you are interested in tools

01:04:15.500 | that will allow you to be more motivated,

01:04:18.020 | to focus longer, sleep better.

01:04:21.080 | That's really what the Huberman Lab Podcast is all about,

01:04:23.500 | but always framed in the context

01:04:26.100 | of neurobiological principles and objective mechanisms.

01:04:30.440 | There are some tools that we can apply

01:04:32.580 | to the dopamine system and motivation

01:04:35.360 | that can really improve our ability

01:04:37.240 | to stay in pursuit of things,

01:04:39.240 | as well as enjoy things after we've achieved our goals

01:04:42.920 | or even en route to our goals.

01:04:45.300 | And here's the key principle.

01:04:47.020 | Dopamine is very subjective,

01:04:51.100 | meaning you can either allow yourself

01:04:53.340 | to experience the pleasure of reaching a milestone,

01:04:56.240 | of achieving or some craving or not.

01:05:00.700 | Now that won't work in the extreme cases of drugs

01:05:03.940 | like cocaine and amphetamine,

01:05:05.620 | but it's actually pretty powerful

01:05:07.620 | what one can do with the subjective system.

01:05:10.460 | In fact, I'm going to describe to you an experiment

01:05:12.500 | that highlights just how powerful the subjective readout

01:05:16.120 | or the subjective interpretation

01:05:17.940 | of a given experience really can be,

01:05:19.540 | even at the level of pharmacology.

01:05:22.200 | I love examples of subjective effects

01:05:24.840 | over things that would otherwise seem hardwired

01:05:27.520 | because they really illustrate the interplay

01:05:30.160 | between our cognition, our belief system,

01:05:33.700 | and what would otherwise be these

01:05:36.480 | just plug and chug kind of mechanisms

01:05:38.960 | of you eat X amount of chocolate

01:05:41.180 | or you drink X amount of water

01:05:43.100 | after being water deprived for a certain amount of time

01:05:45.560 | and you get X amount of dopamine.

01:05:47.140 | Here's the experiment.

01:05:48.460 | The experiment was just published on March 18th, 2021,

01:05:52.660 | so very recently.

01:05:53.860 | And the title of the experiment

01:05:55.340 | is "Expectation for Stimulant Type

01:05:58.220 | Modifies Caffeine's Effects on Mood and Cognition."

01:06:01.940 | This was done in college students.

01:06:03.380 | And it's a fascinating study.

01:06:05.280 | What they did is they gave college students

01:06:09.940 | either placebo, essentially nothing,

01:06:13.620 | or 200 milligrams of caffeine.

01:06:15.380 | 200 milligrams of caffeine is about what's in,

01:06:18.620 | well, a typical coffee,

01:06:20.560 | like a medium coffee that you would buy, a drip coffee,

01:06:23.440 | or a coffee that you'd make at home.

01:06:25.280 | It's a fair amount of caffeine.

01:06:26.460 | If you were to take it in pill form,

01:06:27.900 | it would definitely make you feel more alert

01:06:29.540 | unless you were one of those mutants, literally mutants,

01:06:32.220 | that is insensitive to caffeine.

01:06:34.580 | And those mutants are pretty rare.

01:06:36.300 | So they took 65 undergraduate students in college.

01:06:40.780 | They randomized them to either placebo or caffeine,

01:06:44.320 | and they told them that they were either getting caffeine

01:06:47.860 | or Adderall.

01:06:49.280 | Now, Adderall cognitively carries

01:06:52.060 | a very different expectation.

01:06:55.460 | College students know Adderall

01:06:56.900 | to be a much stronger stimulant than caffeine.

01:06:59.420 | They know it to create a sort of high,

01:07:01.700 | this is the way the students described it,

01:07:03.480 | and they thought that it would increase their level of focus

01:07:06.660 | and their ability to perform work.

01:07:08.380 | So what's really interesting is there was

01:07:10.380 | definitely an effect of placebo versus caffeine.

01:07:13.660 | That's not surprising, however, right?

01:07:15.360 | You take a placebo, you may or may not feel more alert,

01:07:19.160 | but you take 200 milligrams of caffeine,

01:07:20.660 | very likely you're going to feel very alert.

01:07:22.340 | But there was also an effect of whether or not

01:07:25.820 | the students thought they were getting caffeine or Adderall.

01:07:28.960 | The subjects receiving caffeine reported feeling

01:07:31.500 | more stimulated, anxious, and motivated

01:07:33.780 | than the subjects that received the placebo, okay.

01:07:36.220 | But the ones that expected Adderall

01:07:38.180 | reported stronger amphetamine effects.

01:07:40.120 | So they felt much more high.

01:07:42.100 | They performed better on a working memory test.

01:07:45.380 | And in general, they had all the increased

01:07:49.020 | cognitive effects that would have been seen with Adderall,

01:07:52.400 | but they were only ingesting caffeine.

01:07:54.340 | And so this shows an interaction between the drug, caffeine,

01:07:58.340 | and the expectation that it was Adderall.

01:08:01.360 | So it led to heightened performance simply because

01:08:04.500 | the students thought they were getting Adderall.

01:08:06.420 | Now, I don't know whether or not they told them at the end

01:08:09.820 | that it wasn't Adderall, I doubt that they did.

01:08:11.500 | This, if you want to look it up,

01:08:13.500 | the study was published in the Journal of

01:08:16.240 | Experimental Clinical Psychopharmacology.

01:08:19.180 | The paper is Looby et al, L-O-O-B-Y et al.

01:08:23.220 | And again, it was just published March 18th, 2021,

01:08:26.380 | speaks to the fact that yes,

01:08:28.560 | there are so-called placebo effects,

01:08:30.420 | but this is different than placebo.

01:08:31.780 | This is a belief effect about what the specific reactions

01:08:34.900 | to a given stimulant ought to be.

01:08:37.320 | And I think this is very important because I think that

01:08:39.660 | it points to the fact that the top-down,

01:08:43.420 | the kind of higher level cognitive processes

01:08:45.340 | are impacting even the most basic fundamental aspects of,

01:08:49.100 | say dopamine release or adrenaline release

01:08:52.580 | or epinephrine release in ways that can

01:08:54.160 | positively impact performance.

01:08:56.180 | In this case, it was a positive improvement

01:08:57.940 | in working memory and focus.

01:09:00.000 | As long as we're talking about caffeine,

01:09:01.480 | I'd like to point out a study that's really interesting.

01:09:04.400 | This was published in Journal of Neuroscience,

01:09:06.880 | which is the Society for Neurosciences

01:09:08.880 | kind of flagship journal.

01:09:10.240 | It's their journal.

01:09:11.080 | It's a good journal.

01:09:12.840 | And what they showed was that caffeine

01:09:14.880 | can increase dopamine release in the brain by about 30%.

01:09:18.060 | That wasn't surprising, I even said that earlier.

01:09:20.980 | But what they also showed is that it has

01:09:24.020 | a protective effect on dopamine neurons.

01:09:27.480 | So caffeine in some cases may not just

01:09:30.580 | increase dopamine release,

01:09:31.900 | but it might actually have a protective effect

01:09:33.900 | on dopamine neurons.

01:09:35.500 | Now that's distinctly different from some claims

01:09:38.340 | that drugs like MDMA ecstasy have been,

01:09:42.400 | it's been argued can are neurotoxic

01:09:44.740 | for things like dopamine and serotonin neurons.

01:09:47.240 | The study that was published about that

01:09:48.940 | in the journal Science,

01:09:50.240 | which is an extremely prestigious, excellent journal,

01:09:53.820 | later it was shown that it wasn't MDMA ecstasy

01:09:57.800 | that was given in that case.

01:09:59.920 | It was actually amphetamine,

01:10:01.960 | which is known to destroy dopaminergic

01:10:04.960 | and serotonergic neurons.

01:10:06.360 | So what does this mean?

01:10:07.180 | This means that low levels of caffeine may,

01:10:09.320 | at least in a few studies,

01:10:10.480 | be protective for dopamine neurons over time.

01:10:13.480 | That MDMA ecstasy,

01:10:15.600 | something that's in clinical trials right now

01:10:17.460 | for the treatment of trauma, PTSD of various kinds

01:10:20.720 | and depression, but still illegal at this point in time,

01:10:24.580 | may, although it doesn't appear yet

01:10:26.680 | from any published studies,

01:10:27.840 | destroy dopaminergic neurons, perhaps serotonergic neurons.

01:10:30.960 | So there's a real asterisk and a question mark there,

01:10:33.340 | but amphetamine and in particular methamphetamine

01:10:36.320 | is very destructive for dopaminergic neurons.

01:10:40.140 | So I don't think any of us needed any additional reasons

01:10:43.380 | to avoid methamphetamine,

01:10:45.380 | this drug that creates huge increases in dopamine

01:10:48.480 | and then huge crashes from that dopamine,

01:10:51.600 | very destructive drug.

01:10:53.060 | But in addition to that,

01:10:54.040 | seems to destroy dopaminergic neurons.

01:10:56.400 | From time to time, I've talked about nicotine on here,

01:10:59.360 | not smoking because obviously smoking is bad,

01:11:02.720 | lung cancer is bad for health, et cetera.

01:11:06.020 | But nicotine, it's in supplemental form.

01:11:10.080 | I've mentioned that a very famous neuroscientist,

01:11:12.460 | Nobel prize-winning scientists choose a lot of Nicorette.

01:11:15.600 | I know other people who choose Nicorette.

01:11:17.800 | They believe in its neuroprotective effects

01:11:20.240 | for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

01:11:21.800 | And indeed nicotine can stimulate dopamine release.

01:11:24.320 | We talked about that earlier.

01:11:25.720 | Whether or not it has a protective effect isn't clear.

01:11:27.840 | The protective effects might be through the noradrenergic

01:11:30.360 | and acetylcholine systems.

01:11:32.200 | Those findings are still unclear,

01:11:35.400 | but it is interesting to note

01:11:37.000 | that nicotine can increase prolactin somewhat.

01:11:40.680 | There are a couple of studies,

01:11:41.680 | I'd be happy to link to them in the caption

01:11:43.640 | that shows that nicotine taken too much

01:11:45.900 | over too long periods of time can also increase prolactin,

01:11:48.720 | which again is the opposite side of dopamine.

01:11:51.840 | So today we've talked a lot about the dopamine system

01:11:55.280 | and those kinds of schedules

01:11:57.220 | that will allow craving or addiction.

01:12:00.580 | What's the schedule of dopamine that's going to allow you

01:12:03.800 | to maximize on your pursuit of pleasure

01:12:06.220 | and your elimination of pain?

01:12:08.160 | And we get the answer to that

01:12:10.760 | from our good friend gambling.

01:12:14.120 | The reason gambling works,

01:12:15.680 | the reason why people will throw their lives away,

01:12:17.880 | the reason why people go back again and again and again

01:12:21.660 | to places like Las Vegas and Atlantic City

01:12:24.980 | is because of the hope and anticipation.

01:12:28.060 | Those are cities and places built on dopamine.

01:12:31.940 | They are leveraging your dopamine system.

01:12:34.280 | And I realized that there are experienced gamblers.

01:12:37.020 | There are people that enjoy gambling.

01:12:38.460 | I'll actually just say, I like sitting at the roulette table.

01:12:41.740 | I always take a designated amount of money.

01:12:43.460 | It's not much.

01:12:44.460 | I enjoy playing a little bit of roulette.

01:12:46.600 | I certainly enjoy when I win.

01:12:47.920 | I certainly don't like it when I lose,

01:12:49.660 | but I do it surely for the pleasure of playing.

01:12:51.600 | And I do it very seldom.

01:12:52.880 | I don't have a gambling problem.

01:12:55.340 | And if I did, I'd probably tell you,

01:12:57.480 | but I don't have a gambling problem.

01:12:59.640 | Yet people throw away the entire lives on gambling.

01:13:02.280 | And as a friend of mine,

01:13:03.380 | who's a certified addiction treatment specialist tells me

01:13:06.340 | that gambling addiction is a particularly sinister

01:13:09.400 | because the next time really could be

01:13:12.320 | the thing that changes everything.

01:13:13.780 | Unlike other addictions,

01:13:14.840 | the next time really could change everything.

01:13:16.520 | And that's embedded in the mind of the gambling addict.

01:13:18.960 | And rarely does it work out in favor of the wellbeing

01:13:22.640 | of the gambling addict and their family.

01:13:25.280 | However, the intermittent reinforcement schedule

01:13:28.540 | was discovered long ago by scientific researchers.

01:13:31.760 | So this is the slot machine that every once in a while

01:13:34.400 | gives you a win to keep you playing.

01:13:36.320 | This is the probability of winning on the craps table

01:13:39.960 | or the roulette table or at blackjack,

01:13:41.800 | just often enough that you're willing to buy tickets,

01:13:44.720 | head out there, play again,

01:13:46.260 | go downstairs again from your room,

01:13:47.740 | even though you swore you were done for the night.

01:13:49.820 | Intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful form

01:13:53.360 | of dopamine reward schedule to keep you doing something.

01:13:56.640 | So we can export that.

01:13:57.980 | We can use it for good.

01:13:59.980 | If there's something that you're pursuing in life,

01:14:01.740 | whether or not it's an academic goal

01:14:03.560 | or a financial goal or relationship goal,

01:14:05.860 | one of the things that you can do

01:14:08.420 | to ensure that you will remain on the path to that goal

01:14:11.240 | for a very long time and that you will continue

01:14:13.680 | to exceed your previous performance,

01:14:16.000 | as well as continue to enjoy the dopamine release

01:14:18.960 | that occurs when you hit the milestones

01:14:21.040 | that you want to achieve,

01:14:22.800 | is to occasionally remove reward subjectively.

01:14:27.800 | Let's say you set out a goal of making,

01:14:30.640 | I'm going to make this quantitative

01:14:31.800 | with respect to finances

01:14:32.940 | 'cause it just is an easy description,

01:14:34.480 | but this could also be in sport, this could be in school,

01:14:37.400 | this could be in music,

01:14:38.240 | could be in anything, creative endeavors.

01:14:40.080 | But let's say you set out a certain financial goal,

01:14:42.340 | or let's say you want to get a certain number of followers

01:14:44.360 | on whatever social media platform.

01:14:46.880 | As you reach each one of those goals,

01:14:49.480 | you should know now that the amount of dopamine

01:14:51.920 | is not going to peak,

01:14:52.880 | it's actually going to diminish and make you crave more.

01:14:55.600 | The key to avoiding that crash,

01:14:58.240 | but to still keep it in healthy levels

01:14:59.800 | that will allow you to continue your pursuit

01:15:01.920 | is as you are staircasing toward your goal,

01:15:05.320 | maybe that's dollars, maybe that's followers,

01:15:07.240 | maybe that's grades, maybe that's some other metric,

01:15:10.220 | it's medals or trophies.

01:15:12.200 | You actually want to blunt the reward response

01:15:16.880 | for some of those intermediate goals.

01:15:19.500 | Now I'm not telling you you shouldn't celebrate your wins,

01:15:21.600 | but I'm telling you not to celebrate all of them.

01:15:24.120 | Whereas a good friend of mine who recently,

01:15:27.120 | fortunately for him, had a great financial success,

01:15:30.080 | he asked me and somebody else, a good friend of mine

01:15:32.960 | who's very tuned into dopamine reward schedules,

01:15:35.760 | understands how they work at a really deep level.

01:15:37.880 | And he said, "I don't know what to do next."

01:15:39.720 | And we said, "Oh, well, that's simple.

01:15:41.800 | You should just give most of it away."

01:15:43.720 | And this wasn't a ploy to receive any of the money ourselves,

01:15:46.920 | this was really about reducing the impact of that reward.

01:15:50.720 | Now, hopefully giving money away

01:15:52.400 | if you already have enough of it

01:15:53.960 | would be something that was rewarding in and of itself.

01:15:57.280 | But if you're a student who's pursuing goals in university,

01:16:00.900 | or you're an athlete who's pursuing goals,

01:16:03.660 | it actually makes sense from a rational perspective

01:16:06.960 | once you understand these mechanisms

01:16:09.200 | to hit a new high point of performance,

01:16:13.120 | or to get that A+ or for you if it's an A-, et cetera,

01:16:17.480 | and to tell yourself, "Okay, that was good,"

01:16:19.880 | but to actually actively blunt the reward,

01:16:23.020 | to not go and celebrate too intensely.

01:16:26.500 | Because in doing that,

01:16:27.700 | you keep your dopamine system in check

01:16:30.120 | and you ensure that you're going to stay

01:16:31.780 | on the path of continued pursuit,

01:16:33.800 | not just for that thing, but for all things.

01:16:35.860 | Big increases in dopamine lead to big crashes in dopamine,

01:16:39.640 | and big increases in dopamine up the ante.

01:16:42.560 | They increase the extent to which

01:16:45.180 | you are willing to invest time and energy

01:16:48.060 | in order to achieve goals and rewards

01:16:51.180 | that may be out of your reach.

01:16:52.640 | You never really know if you're going to succeed.

01:16:54.960 | So to make this crystal clear, celebrate your wins,

01:16:59.020 | but don't celebrate every win.

01:17:00.720 | That's one way that you can ensure

01:17:02.220 | that you're going to continue down the path of progress.

01:17:04.920 | And I think most of the learning tools that are in schools

01:17:08.040 | are about reward, hopefully for genuine performance.

01:17:12.100 | They are about encouraging us.

01:17:13.540 | We do have to believe that we can perform well.

01:17:15.980 | One of the hallmarks of growth mindset

01:17:17.620 | is the internalization,

01:17:19.100 | that we're not getting it right yet.

01:17:21.740 | The word yet is very important.

01:17:23.840 | And also the sense that we reward our good behavior,

01:17:28.580 | our good performance, but not every time.

01:17:31.860 | One way to do this is to actually take the reward

01:17:34.800 | and reinforcement out of your own hands and your own mind.

01:17:37.660 | And you tell somebody that they are in control

01:17:41.280 | of whether or not you're allowed

01:17:42.340 | to feel good about your wins.

01:17:43.600 | Now, this is, I realize is very unnatural for most people.

01:17:46.840 | But if you're somebody who's simply going to be in pursuit

01:17:50.100 | and you're going to really register your wins,

01:17:52.360 | and you think that that's going to actually

01:17:53.780 | make you a better performer,

01:17:55.140 | it will in the short term, but not in the long term.

01:17:57.620 | So you can lift the, what Las Vegas and Atlantic City

01:18:02.060 | and other gambling mechanisms and places

01:18:05.660 | have known for a long time.

01:18:06.620 | They lifted it from the scientists.

01:18:07.920 | You can now take it back and you can start to leverage that.

01:18:10.980 | And you just make it intermittent.

01:18:12.460 | You reward yourself not on a predictable schedule.

01:18:15.300 | So not every other time or every third time

01:18:17.620 | or every 10th time, but sometimes it's three in a row,

01:18:19.740 | then not at all for 10 days.

01:18:21.820 | So reward is important.

01:18:24.420 | Self-reward is critically important,

01:18:26.340 | but make sure that you're not doing it

01:18:28.340 | on such a predictable schedule

01:18:30.660 | that you burn out these dopamine circuits

01:18:33.580 | or that you undercut your own ability to strive and achieve.

01:18:38.540 | I actually have a story from graduate school,

01:18:41.460 | which I was forced into an intermittent reinforcement

01:18:44.740 | schedule that I do believe has served me very well

01:18:47.700 | in my scientific career and other aspects of life.

01:18:50.620 | My graduate advisor was an amazing scientist.

01:18:53.540 | Unfortunately, she passed away, but amazing scientists

01:18:56.420 | and amazing human being with a very dry

01:18:59.200 | and somewhat cruel sense of humor.

01:19:01.980 | Her name was Barbara Chapman.

01:19:03.620 | And we published a paper in the journal Science.

01:19:07.100 | And Science, Nature and Cell are considered the big three,

01:19:11.100 | the most competitive journals to publish in.

01:19:13.740 | I had a first author paper in Science.

01:19:15.880 | It was really exciting to me.

01:19:18.340 | I was a graduate student.

01:19:19.340 | I was very excited about the discovery.

01:19:21.240 | I was excited that it was in Science.

01:19:22.820 | I was just thrilled.

01:19:24.900 | And I remember when the paper finally got accepted

01:19:27.200 | because it involved a ton of revisions

01:19:29.260 | and a lot of very hard work.

01:19:31.980 | And she came in and she said, paper got accepted.

01:19:35.620 | I was super excited.

01:19:36.920 | And she just kind of sat there and nodded.

01:19:38.960 | And I said, are we going to celebrate?

01:19:41.700 | Are we going to have a party?

01:19:42.820 | Or like, what are we going to do?

01:19:44.400 | And I'll never forget her answer.

01:19:45.600 | She said, "Hmm, I think we should skip this one."

01:19:50.420 | And I thought she was joking.

01:19:51.740 | And I said, "What do you mean skip this one?

01:19:53.220 | We're going to publish the paper."

01:19:54.060 | She said, "Yeah, we're going to publish the paper."

01:19:55.420 | But she said, "Maybe when you get like four more,

01:20:00.140 | maybe three, maybe two."

01:20:02.180 | And I thought she was messing with me.

01:20:03.820 | And she wasn't messing with me.

01:20:05.060 | And she was right.

01:20:05.900 | We never had a party.

01:20:06.900 | We never had a celebration for that paper.

01:20:09.100 | I think she was really trying to instill two ideas in me.

01:20:12.380 | One is that the work itself

01:20:14.700 | was what was supposed to be most rewarding.

01:20:16.560 | The practice of experimentation or writing the paper,

01:20:19.440 | the experience of achieving something

01:20:20.980 | you worked very hard at.

01:20:22.380 | And that did indeed feel amazing.

01:20:24.140 | I actually can still feel it in my body now, the excitement.

01:20:26.800 | So there's still a dopamine release

01:20:29.260 | or that arc is going very long.

01:20:31.060 | This would be almost 20 years ago now that this happened.

01:20:35.120 | So that's remarkable.

01:20:36.500 | The other one is that she's right.

01:20:38.660 | We never went out and celebrated.

01:20:40.580 | And we did celebrate other wins,

01:20:42.340 | other papers in the future and things of that sort.

01:20:44.780 | But she was either consciously or subconsciously

01:20:48.580 | putting me on an intermittent reward schedule.

01:20:50.820 | And to this day, when something really good happens,

01:20:54.180 | I actually hesitate as to whether or not

01:20:56.500 | I want to internalize that and celebrate,

01:20:58.940 | whether I want to tell anybody,

01:21:00.220 | which is its own form of celebration

01:21:01.840 | 'cause then you're getting positive feedback.

01:21:03.660 | And so I am very cautious with how I deploy dopamine release

01:21:08.260 | in response to wins.

01:21:09.560 | It's certainly not the only way

01:21:10.780 | that I've navigated my career.

01:21:12.880 | There are a number of other principles I incorporate,

01:21:15.060 | but intermittent reward for wins, for achievements

01:21:20.700 | is a very powerful way to ensure

01:21:22.660 | that you will stay on the path of pursuit.

01:21:25.260 | At this point in the podcast,

01:21:27.220 | I'd like to take a moment to address some corrections.

01:21:30.540 | I made some errors in previous episodes.

01:21:32.540 | They weren't major errors,

01:21:33.740 | but a couple of you pointed them out.

01:21:35.700 | And it's important to me that we strive for accuracy.

01:21:38.980 | So the first one was I talked in a previous episode

01:21:42.300 | about the potential benefits for some people, not all,

01:21:45.940 | of ashwagandha and its role in blunting cortisol

01:21:49.740 | in a way of offsetting medium-term and some long-term stress.

01:21:54.160 | It's a supplement that I've benefited from.

01:21:56.340 | It works through the GABA system and some other systems.

01:21:59.020 | Someone pointed out a study

01:22:00.740 | that admittedly was done in rats.

01:22:03.020 | I was focusing mainly on studies in humans

01:22:05.620 | during the episode,

01:22:06.440 | but they point out a study that was done in rats

01:22:08.980 | that showed that long-term administration of ashwagandha

01:22:13.700 | could actually create some negative effects,

01:22:16.380 | mainly on the thyroid and perhaps even the cortisol system,

01:22:20.660 | maybe the melatonin system.

01:22:22.240 | I just want to acknowledge that study.

01:22:24.420 | I'll reference it in the caption.

01:22:26.680 | Again, that was a rat study.

01:22:27.900 | I was focused on human studies.

01:22:29.200 | Please go to examine.com.

01:22:31.100 | Put in ashwagandha, it will tell you the various effects

01:22:33.620 | on different aspects of brain and body.

01:22:35.640 | It will also link to the PubMed articles

01:22:37.500 | that are relevant there.

01:22:38.800 | It is called the human effect matrix

01:22:40.340 | 'cause that's only focused on humans.

01:22:42.020 | That's one of the reasons I like examine.com

01:22:43.840 | is it's focused on human studies.

01:22:45.700 | Again, a wonderful free resource.

01:22:47.460 | But I do appreciate that you pointed out that study

01:22:50.920 | because I do want people to be aware of the range of effects

01:22:54.220 | that these various compounds can have.

01:22:56.200 | As well, a couple of times in previous episodes,

01:22:59.860 | I said 5-HTP and not 5-HT.

01:23:04.620 | 5-HT is serotonin.

01:23:06.420 | 5-HTP is a precursor to serotonin.

01:23:09.660 | I was talking about supplements and compounds

01:23:11.860 | that can stimulate the release of serotonin.

01:23:14.560 | In the previous episode,

01:23:15.620 | I was actually referring to it in a context

01:23:17.580 | for which I don't personally like to take 5-HTP.

01:23:20.660 | That's just my own bias

01:23:22.660 | for reasons I described in that episode.

01:23:24.460 | But if you heard me say 5-HTP

01:23:27.460 | when I meant to say 5-HT, I apologize.

01:23:31.220 | And then last, I just want to point out again,

01:23:33.280 | something that I mentioned in the beginning,

01:23:34.420 | which is that the Huberman Lab Podcast

01:23:36.540 | is now subtitled in Spanish.

01:23:38.840 | Episodes one and two,

01:23:40.060 | as well as our welcome video are in Spanish.

01:23:41.920 | The other ones will be subtitled soon.

01:23:44.780 | You can expect that within the next couple of weeks.

01:23:47.100 | So if you know Spanish-speaking people

01:23:49.440 | who prefer to digest the information in Spanish,

01:23:52.140 | or that's you,

01:23:53.700 | you can look forward to the Spanish subtitles.

01:23:56.140 | You need to activate those

01:23:58.060 | in the caption feature on YouTube.

01:24:00.300 | Unfortunately, we don't have Spanish dubbing over

01:24:03.900 | in the audio platforms.

01:24:06.020 | I realize once again, we've covered a lot of material.

01:24:09.740 | Hopefully you now know far more about the dopamine system,

01:24:13.140 | reward and motivation

01:24:15.180 | than you did at the beginning of this podcast.

01:24:17.820 | Hopefully you also understand the other side

01:24:20.540 | of dopamine and reward,

01:24:21.660 | which is pain and the balance of this pleasure pain system,

01:24:25.100 | as well as the molecules that we call,

01:24:28.020 | or that were described in the Molecule of More book,

01:24:30.560 | I should say, as the here and now molecules,

01:24:32.760 | things like serotonin and the endocannabinoids.

01:24:36.020 | We talked about a variety of supplement-based tools,

01:24:38.860 | things like vitamin B6 and zinc

01:24:40.740 | as they relate to prolactin, PEA,

01:24:43.300 | very interesting compound.

01:24:45.320 | Again, I've never tried it, very interesting,

01:24:47.340 | definitely in use out there.

01:24:48.980 | L-DOPA, Macuna Purines,

01:24:51.020 | talked about caffeine, talked about nicotine,

01:24:55.340 | talked about how some of the effects of Adderall

01:24:57.980 | can be created purely cognitively

01:24:59.820 | without actually ingesting Adderall,

01:25:01.700 | simply by telling people they're ingesting Adderall,

01:25:04.100 | giving them caffeine.

01:25:04.980 | Very interesting study

01:25:06.740 | that I referenced a little bit earlier.

01:25:08.860 | And we talked about scheduling dopamine,

01:25:12.220 | adopting the intermittent reward schedule for yourself

01:25:16.260 | in order to ensure long-term engagement

01:25:19.080 | with pursuits that I hope are healthy pursuits

01:25:21.820 | and ones that serve you well.

01:25:24.260 | This was by no means an exhaustive coverage

01:25:27.260 | of all things dopamine and motivation.

01:25:29.960 | It was by no means the only time

01:25:32.140 | that we're going to talk about dopamine and motivation.

01:25:35.120 | Next episode, we're going to continue to talk about emotions

01:25:37.500 | from yet another perspective.

01:25:40.100 | But hopefully you have enough now to think about

01:25:42.460 | in the meantime, and that you can consider adopting

01:25:45.700 | in your own life and practices.

01:25:47.420 | As always, I really want to thank you

01:25:49.940 | for your time and attention.

01:25:51.440 | If you've learned something useful today,

01:25:53.180 | please pass it along.

01:25:54.560 | One of the things that we teach in science

01:25:56.660 | that I think is really wonderful to adopt in general in life

01:25:59.520 | is this idea of watch one, do one, teach one.

01:26:02.940 | This is what we tell graduate students

01:26:04.460 | and med students and postdocs.

01:26:06.380 | Watch somebody do something, learn it,

01:26:08.520 | then do it, apply it, see if it works for you,

01:26:11.060 | and then teach it.

01:26:12.280 | So it's usually not watch one, do one, teach one.

01:26:14.340 | It's usually watch one, do 20,

01:26:17.480 | teach as many people as you possibly want.

01:26:20.860 | I'm not looking for attribution.

01:26:22.140 | These are tools that are grounded in neuroscience

01:26:24.420 | for which I can't claim attribution.

01:26:26.300 | I'm just passing them along so that you can adopt them

01:26:28.900 | if you like and pass them along

01:26:30.900 | if you think people can benefit from them.

01:26:33.160 | Many of you have continued to ask

01:26:34.780 | how you can help support the Huberman Lab Podcast.

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01:26:51.140 | Typically, we release episodes every Monday,

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01:27:40.220 | at any level that you like.

01:27:42.320 | As well, because we mentioned supplements

01:27:44.460 | from time to time throughout the podcast,

01:27:46.580 | and people always ask about what brands and sources

01:27:49.500 | we use or suggest for those supplements,

01:27:52.120 | we partnered with Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E.

01:27:55.820 | Thorne supplements are known to be

01:27:57.820 | among the most stringent supplements in terms of

01:28:00.560 | the specificity of what's in the bottle,

01:28:02.460 | matches what's on the label,

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01:28:07.140 | The Mayo Clinic and all the major sports organizations

01:28:09.980 | are partnered with Thorne because of that stringency

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01:28:15.140 | If you'd like to see the supplements that I personally take,

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01:28:35.980 | That's thorne.com/u/huberman to get 20% off

01:28:40.980 | any of the supplements that Thorne makes.

01:28:43.600 | Finally, I want to thank you

01:28:44.800 | for your time and attention today.

01:28:46.480 | I hope you learned a lot and that you learned

01:28:48.840 | a lot of possible tools that you could incorporate

01:28:51.440 | into your life as it relates to motivation and emotions.

01:28:55.660 | Thank you for your interest in science.

01:28:57.520 | [upbeat music]

01:29:00.100 | (upbeat music)

How to Increase Motivation & Drive

Chapters