DOPAMINE DYNAMICS • - Dopamine is less about pleasure than it is about motivation and drive. In order to keep the reward systems of your brain working for you instead of against you, it can be wise to avoid things that lead to big dopamine increases without much effort. This doesn’t mean you should avoid contentment. Contentment is a sense of appreciation and gratitude from what you have and involves many neuromodulators. (Too many to assign just one). - The important thing to understand about dopamine is that the faster and higher it goes, the lower and longer it drops below baseline afterwards. This is covered beautifully by the work of Dr. Anna Lembke MD, of @stanford.med and author of Dopamine Nation and former guest on the Huberman Lab podcast. - You do not need to be pleasure averse. That’s not the point. The point is to be mindful of cultivating both a mixture of activities that require effort to derive pleasure and also seeking contentment from what you have, and to realize that anything that quickly spikes dopamine without effort is likely to be destructive in the long run. Seeking joy in the small things is entirely compatible with this picture. - If you have any questions, please put them in the comments section below this post and as always, thank you for your interest in science! - @hubermanlab @stanford.med @stanford - #neuroscience #science #ciencia #neurociencia