Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Happy Saturday. Chuck here with a curated selects
Speaker 1: episode in which we bring out a classic from dusted
Speaker 1: off from the old dustbin so you can give it
Speaker 1: a listen. This one is called how Dopamine Works, and
Speaker 1: it's one of obviously one of our more sciencey episodes.
Speaker 1: And I managed to struggle to get through it, because
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not good at these. But it was
Speaker 1: a great episode, so I hope you like it. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Joshing. There's Chuck
Speaker 2: and Jerry's here too. The three amigos back together again
Speaker 2: after some massively triumphant live shows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we did a little Northeast Spring swing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was great.
Speaker 1: It was a good show. Which one the podcast topic
Speaker 1: that did that we did live? Oh, I know that
Speaker 1: we're doing all year.
Speaker 2: I got to it was pretty good. I love that
Speaker 2: that topic.
Speaker 1: That's what you call an on secuitter.
Speaker 2: But it does feel good to be back, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: Back in the studio, back doing what we're born to do.
Speaker 1: I kind of prefer on stage, but sure, this is
Speaker 1: great to do.
Speaker 2: You you like the thrill of the audience, the roar
Speaker 2: of the crowd, that bowl running at you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Nice, I like it too, sometimes when I'm not totally
Speaker 2: terrified because I drank too much energy drinks.
Speaker 1: Well, I wonder if your dopamine receptors are functioning as
Speaker 1: they should.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question, Chuck. And that's a wonderful
Speaker 2: segue too, because it just so happens that today the
Speaker 2: topic of this episode is dopamine, and there's probably no
Speaker 2: more misunderstood neurochemical, certainly neurochemical maybe substance in your body
Speaker 2: at all than dopamine. We used to think we had
Speaker 2: a really great handle on dopamine and what it does
Speaker 2: and how it works, and it turns out that we are.
Speaker 2: At every turn a new study comes along that says, Nope,
Speaker 2: we're wrong. Yep, we're wrong about that. Well what about yep?
Speaker 2: Wrong about that? Basically everything we know in popular culture,
Speaker 2: and I mean, if you even gone to like Cleveland
Speaker 2: Clinic website or WebMD website or Harvard Health has some articles,
Speaker 2: you'll see this old, antiquated, outdated view of what dopamine
Speaker 2: is being kind of paraded around the idea that it's
Speaker 2: a pleasure inducing chemical. That if something gives you pleasure,
Speaker 2: you're responding to a hit of dopamine, and that is
Speaker 2: just absolutely not true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this may be the most oft covered stuff
Speaker 1: you should know, thing that hasn't gotten its own title yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Man, that dopamine is the reigning champ right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we talk about this stuff all the time, it seems.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, we do, because it comes up a lot.
Speaker 2: And the reason why is because it turns out it
Speaker 2: has a lot to do with with more than just pleasure.
Speaker 2: Like everybody, Yes, it is associated with pleasure, just not
Speaker 2: the way we've thought for very long. And it does
Speaker 2: a lot of other stuff too. Essentially, what it does
Speaker 2: is it signals things. It says, hey, you you behave
Speaker 2: or you act up, you stop behaving, something like that.
Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure exactly what it says. I don't
Speaker 2: speak dopamine, but it's a neurotransmitter, so it's a chemical
Speaker 2: messenger in the brain at base. But it's associated with
Speaker 2: so many different things that of course dopamine comes up
Speaker 2: all the time in our podcast.
Speaker 1: It sure does. So it is, like you said, a neurotransmitter,
Speaker 1: one of more than a hundred of those bad boys
Speaker 1: functioning in our bodies, and it, like you said, it
Speaker 1: lets things communicate. It's a facilitator, but it gets all
Speaker 1: the press for its you know, like the feel good
Speaker 1: stuff that you mentioned, addiction behaviors, whether it's gambling or drugs,
Speaker 1: or the thrill of you know those people that walk
Speaker 1: around on ledges and stuff. Ledgewalkers, Yeah, ledgewalkers. But it
Speaker 1: does all kinds of things. That's just the where it
Speaker 1: makes the newspaper headlines. But we should probably talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about just the narrow transmitter cycle that it
Speaker 1: goes through.
Speaker 2: Sure, so the whole thing starts. It turns out that
Speaker 2: dopamine is used throughout the body, but for the most
Speaker 2: part it's used in the brain. The problem is is
Speaker 2: if you like had a big handful of dopamine and
Speaker 2: you just shoved it in your mouth, it couldn't make
Speaker 2: it into your brain for use. It can't cross the
Speaker 2: blood brain barrier. In other words, Fortunately, the thing that
Speaker 2: makes dopamine up, it's essential ingredient tyrosine and amino acid,
Speaker 2: can cross the blood brain barrier, and when it gets there,
Speaker 2: it gets a big fat from something called tyrosine hydroxylase,
Speaker 2: and that converts it into dopamine and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: your brain's like, yes, let's go.
Speaker 1: That's right. And we've known about it a long time.
Speaker 1: It's been around a long time. It is not exclusive
Speaker 1: to human beings.
Speaker 2: No, that's a bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's in all kinds of animals. But we are
Speaker 1: really kind of great at making it. And I was
Speaker 1: about to say hooked on it, but that implies the
Speaker 1: whole addiction thing, and I don't want to go down
Speaker 1: that road. But humans love the stuff, and we produce
Speaker 1: about three times as much as other primates do.
Speaker 2: Yes, And in fact, Emily Deans wrote an article in
Speaker 2: twenty eleven I think on psychology today. She's an evolutionary psychiatrist,
Speaker 2: and she said that dopamine is what made humans so successful.
Speaker 2: And from what I can tell, the latest research about
Speaker 2: dopamine is that it essentially is what allows us to
Speaker 2: learn about the world around us. We make connections that
Speaker 2: collectively form our mental map of the world, of how
Speaker 2: we're to behavior on other people, of how we do
Speaker 2: things like go get food, like that dopamine is somehow
Speaker 2: behind all of it, and that because we're so responsive
Speaker 2: to dopamine and we produce so much dopamine compared to
Speaker 2: other animals in the animal kingdom. That is, conceivably what
Speaker 2: has allowed us to become as successful as we are
Speaker 2: compared to other animals in that nuts like it could
Speaker 2: all just come down to dopamine essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, opposable thumbs maybe.
Speaker 2: Sure, But I mean, what are opposable thumbs if you
Speaker 2: can't have get the wear with all the to move it.
Speaker 1: True, but if you had the wherewithal to move it,
Speaker 1: you could grab something.
Speaker 2: Yes, you can use the heels of both hands just
Speaker 2: like a thumb.
Speaker 1: Are you under selling the opposable thumb?
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm sick of the imposable thumb always hogging the spot.
Speaker 2: It's dopamine's time.
Speaker 1: You can get those removed. You know, see how you do?
Speaker 2: I guess that sounds like a dare to me, Chuck.
Speaker 1: Say goodbye to your tennis game.
Speaker 2: I can play it just by holding the racket with
Speaker 2: the both heels in my hand.
Speaker 1: I guess we should have said pickleball. That'd be more current, right,
Speaker 1: I don't play pickleball. I haven't tried it yet.
Speaker 2: I want to, though, Okay, Well, there's plenty of places
Speaker 2: and people to play it with.
Speaker 1: Yet I have found no one or no place.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure somebody will write in and offer to play.
Speaker 1: With you, of course, and then I go out there
Speaker 1: and I like blow my acl or something.
Speaker 2: Oh god, that was nice.
Speaker 1: So at the highest level, you know, we kind of
Speaker 1: talked about this a thousand times before, but dopamine functions
Speaker 1: as a neurotransmitter. It enables signals to pass through these gaps,
Speaker 1: these synapses and make connection from neuron to neuron. And
Speaker 1: that's just sort of the bird's eye view. But there
Speaker 1: are all kinds of things that dope I mean does,
Speaker 1: and depending what kinds of neurons it's talking to and
Speaker 1: it's introducing to one another, it's gonna have different effects
Speaker 1: on the human body.
Speaker 2: Yes, So there's D one to D five I think,
Speaker 2: types of receptors, dopamine receptors and four pathways that they follow,
Speaker 2: and like you said, depending on what receptor is being
Speaker 2: activated and what pathways being followed, all sorts of different
Speaker 2: stuff can happen. Dopaminees associated with motor control, learning, memory.
Speaker 2: Malfunctions in it can result in psychosis. They use dopamine
Speaker 2: as a vaso stimulant to treat heart conditions. That has
Speaker 2: just a cluster of different effects on the body depending
Speaker 2: on where it's being processed, like what pathway it's being processed, right,
Speaker 2: And I think I said there's four of them total.
Speaker 1: Did you want to talk about this?
Speaker 2: I feel like we should. Okay.
Speaker 1: The first one is the nigros striatal tract. Nice, you
Speaker 1: mentioned motor control first, and that's the tract that has
Speaker 1: to do with motor control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so if those aren't working correctly. The one that
Speaker 2: the dopamine neurons are the dopaminergic pathway in the nigrostriadal
Speaker 2: tract that can result in Parkinson's. It's very famously associated
Speaker 2: with dopamine for anybody who has read Awakenings or saw
Speaker 2: the movie Yeah, which will probably talk about a little
Speaker 2: bit more later that movie. Yeah, Okay, I got a great,
Speaker 2: great bit up my sleeve.
Speaker 1: Okay. The second pathway is a Mezzo Corty call pathway
Speaker 1: that has a lot to do with executive functioning, prioritizing stuff,
Speaker 1: how your brain plans things, how it files away stuff,
Speaker 1: and how it you know, how it organizes your overall
Speaker 1: sort of priorities.
Speaker 2: Yes, and now it's time to talk about the most
Speaker 2: random dopaminergic pathway of all the two bear fundibular pathway
Speaker 2: two boro in fundibular.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think get it right the first time.
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll edit out the second one. Then we'll put
Speaker 2: in a slide whistle over it, so that connects us
Speaker 2: the hypothalamus and the petuitary gland. And it's from what
Speaker 2: I can tell, I was like, well, what else does
Speaker 2: it do? It's sole The sole role of this pathway
Speaker 2: is to block the production of milk or yes, to
Speaker 2: prevent the production of milk in the female breast of mammals.
Speaker 2: That's what it does. That's that that's that pathway's role.
Speaker 2: And if you block that pathway, the milk production begins.
Speaker 2: Isn't that interesting?
Speaker 1: Yeah? We talked about that in the two parter, the
Speaker 1: old Breastfeeding two parter.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh I don't remember that.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, wow where No, I have a terrible memory.
Speaker 1: I know you're making fun of me.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: There's there's also the mesolimbic pathway. We've talked a lot
Speaker 1: about the Olympics in many episodes, but reward and emotion
Speaker 1: and this is the one where this is the one
Speaker 1: that gets all the pressed because this is the one
Speaker 1: that has to deal with addiction pleasure, and we're going
Speaker 1: to talk a lot about reward and how reward factors
Speaker 1: into how dopamine works.
Speaker 2: Right, This is the reason why some people get the
Speaker 2: chemical drawing of the molecular drawing of dopamine like tattooed
Speaker 2: on their wrists, because they're such so hedonic and into pleasure.
Speaker 2: That's why you might see somebody with that because of
Speaker 2: that pathway.
Speaker 1: I never heard of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a thing. Unfortunately it turns out to be
Speaker 2: a misinterpretation, but it is a thing that people do sometimes.
Speaker 1: Sure. So you know, we talked about misunderstandings about dopamine,
Speaker 1: and up until not too long ago, we didn't know
Speaker 1: a lot about exactly how dopamine worked in the body.
Speaker 1: And there was a misguided thought that there was something
Speaker 1: called volume transmission at work, which was you just sort of, well,
Speaker 1: you don't flood we'll talk about, you know, artificially flooding dopamine,
Speaker 1: which is also a problem that resulted from this misnomer.
Speaker 1: But dopamine just went very slowly, it was not very
Speaker 1: specific at all, just kind of washed over the brain
Speaker 1: and if it made some connections with various neurons, then
Speaker 1: that was kind of the dumb luck of dopamine, because
Speaker 1: dopamine is just dopey.
Speaker 2: Right. Here's a great example of just how wrong we
Speaker 2: got dopamine. It turns out the process that dopamine is
Speaker 2: excreted and crosses into the synapse and creates like an
Speaker 2: electrical electrical transmission in the brain is the exact opposite,
Speaker 2: totally volume transmission.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It could not be more opposite then the idea that
Speaker 2: just floods slowly across the brain and whatever it runs
Speaker 2: into it runs into. We found that in milliseconds, a
Speaker 2: precise squirt of dopamine hits exactly the right neuron in
Speaker 2: exactly the right place. It's right on the money. That's
Speaker 2: how dopamine is excreted, the exact opposite of volume transmission.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we learned that not too long ago twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: medical researchers at HAVID released this paper and said, hey,
Speaker 1: guess what, everyone is the opposite of everything you've been saying,
Speaker 1: and everyone want oh okay, sorry about that. Sure might be.
Speaker 2: So, after the dopamine is excreted and it does its job,
Speaker 2: it actually breaks down remarkably quickly. It turns into something
Speaker 2: it's metabolized and it is something called homovanillic acid, right,
Speaker 2: And from what I can tell, I don't know what
Speaker 2: the homo does to the vanillic acid, but vanillic acid
Speaker 2: is the flavor of vanilla. So from what I can tell,
Speaker 2: if you tasted the homovanillic acid, which is like the
Speaker 2: metabolite found in cirro spinal fluid that we test to
Speaker 2: see how much dopamine you have in your brain at
Speaker 2: any given time, it may taste like vanilla. Wow, isn't
Speaker 2: that interesting? It's gross. It is gross, and I don't know. Also,
Speaker 2: if we said that just twenty thousand neurons are capable
Speaker 2: of synthesizing dopamine, but that's a really small proportion of
Speaker 2: the total number of neurons we have to about one
Speaker 2: hundred billion, I think, yeah, absolutely, you want to take
Speaker 2: a break.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll break and we'll talk about, well what everyone
Speaker 1: wants to hear about, which is how dopamine and pleasure
Speaker 1: hold hands with one another.
Speaker 2: So check this whole under I should say, misunderstanding of
Speaker 2: dopamine as the ultimate pleasure chemical. If you take a
Speaker 2: drag off a cigarette, if you snort a line of coke,
Speaker 2: if if the person you love like touches your hand.
Speaker 2: If you get like an a from from the teacher, like,
Speaker 2: you're gonna get a hit at dopamine, and that's what
Speaker 2: that's what your reward is. That's it's pretty old. It's
Speaker 2: an old idea at least it dates back to the
Speaker 2: middle of the twentieth century, which is we're getting further
Speaker 2: and further away from which makes me gulp. But that
Speaker 2: idea being discredited is pretty old too, Like it didn't
Speaker 2: last very long. The problem is its legacy stuck around
Speaker 2: for a really long time. It's still around today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. There was a researcher speaking of old
Speaker 1: named James Olds in the fifties and sixties who did
Speaker 1: some experiments with rats and said, hey, every time I
Speaker 1: give these rats a little electrical stimulation and just the
Speaker 1: right place right there behind the ear, they're going to
Speaker 1: keep pulling that lever down or whatever act I'm making
Speaker 1: them do. That. They'll just do that over and over
Speaker 1: and over and over and over as long as I
Speaker 1: keep stimulating that area.
Speaker 2: Right. So what they said was, Okay, there's something going
Speaker 2: on with dopamine and this I guess pleasurable act that
Speaker 2: the rat is doing to itself, and that.
Speaker 1: Got followed up in Whoa, Whoa.
Speaker 2: That got followed up in the seventies by a guy
Speaker 2: named Roy Wise who depleted dopamine receptors in rats and
Speaker 2: found that they would not seek out food and they
Speaker 2: wouldn't seek out methamphetamines that were just there on the offer.
Speaker 2: Those rats could have as much meth as they wanted,
Speaker 2: and they were like, no, I don't want any. And
Speaker 2: crucially critically, roy Wise and his colleagues misinterpreted that as
Speaker 2: a lack of experience of pleasure, not a lack of motivation.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't until the eighties that some other people
Speaker 2: came along and they were like, no, oh, we've been
Speaker 2: getting this wrong all this time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the eighties they use sugar instead of meth amphetamine,
Speaker 1: I guess. And once again, very kind of cruelly, they
Speaker 1: cut off, they didn't allow them any dopamine. They killed
Speaker 1: them off with drugs. But this time they gave them
Speaker 1: the sugar and they said they're liking the sugar. You
Speaker 1: can tell by the look on that little guy's face,
Speaker 1: and he enjoys it. But and this is the key,
Speaker 1: it's not coming back and saying give me more sugar,
Speaker 1: Give me more sugar.
Speaker 2: Right, or give me more meth.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 2: So this whole thing, this changed our understanding, at least
Speaker 2: in the academia among people who study this kind of thing.
Speaker 2: We realized we were misinterpreting what we were seeing and
Speaker 2: that a lack of dopamine didn't lead to a lack
Speaker 2: of pleasure called an ahdonia or an hodonia. It was
Speaker 2: a lack of motivation to seek out that. That's the
Speaker 2: effect of not having enough dopamine that we found from
Speaker 2: those rat tests. So like this whole new framework of
Speaker 2: understanding it kind of came along because, to be clear,
Speaker 2: dopamine is very much associated with things that give us pleasure,
Speaker 2: and it does seem like the more pleasurable something is,
Speaker 2: the more dopamine gets released. Like, for example, I think
Speaker 2: I saw it like eating something that tastes really good
Speaker 2: increases your dopamine levels by one hundred percent sometimes yeah,
Speaker 2: but cocaine increases your dopamine levels ten times that. So
Speaker 2: the more intense the pleasurable experience is, the more dopamine
Speaker 2: gets released. So it's definitely associated with it. What they
Speaker 2: found is like the dopamine is not making you feel pleasure.
Speaker 2: There's something else involved. It's just it's never caught with
Speaker 2: the smoking gun, but it's always there when the dead
Speaker 2: body's found, and it has this mysterious smile on its
Speaker 2: face because I know you can't prove anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's liking versus And that's a theory of
Speaker 1: reward behavior. Where liking is that pleasure that hits you
Speaker 1: get right when you put that bite of peanut butter
Speaker 1: pie in your mouth, is that pleasure. Wanting is the
Speaker 1: motivation to earn the reward that you get out of
Speaker 1: having that peanut butter pie. Like you know, you're up
Speaker 1: in the hotel room. They don't have room service, but
Speaker 1: you can get up out of bed, and you can
Speaker 1: get dressed, and you can get down the stairs because
Speaker 1: the elevator's broken and get that peanut butter pie if
Speaker 1: you want to. But dopamine isn't enough to motivate you
Speaker 1: to get up and go get that peanut butter pie necessarily,
Speaker 1: even though you have great, great memories of the taste
Speaker 1: of it on your tongue and you'd love that stuff.
Speaker 2: You're right. But if you do get up and go
Speaker 2: get that peanut butter pie, that means that in the
Speaker 2: past you've had peanut butter pie or have created an
Speaker 2: image of the peanut butter pie you've never had that's
Speaker 2: so great. The dopamine is produced in enough amounts to
Speaker 2: actually get you up out of bed, dressed and going
Speaker 2: down the stairs to get that peanut butter pie. They're
Speaker 2: related in that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, So it's not actually causing the pleasure. It's
Speaker 1: just influencing how your brain is taking all this stuff
Speaker 1: in basically, and there are a couple of different ways
Speaker 1: of looking at how this happens. There's one theory called
Speaker 1: a that it's prediction error, so you get more bang
Speaker 1: for your buck. Basically, you expected to like that peanut
Speaker 1: butter pie, but this was the best peanut butter pie
Speaker 1: you've ever had, maybe the best dessert you've ever had
Speaker 1: in your life, and you're like, wow, your brain says
Speaker 1: that was way way better than I thought it was
Speaker 1: going to be, so it reinforces.
Speaker 2: It right, And to put it in kind of computational terms,
Speaker 2: dopamine is a prediction error somehow that chemical measures the
Speaker 2: difference between what you expected and the amazing reward you got,
Speaker 2: and the greater the difference, the more pronounced a connection
Speaker 2: that dopamine is going to make between going and getting
Speaker 2: peanut butter pie and eating peanut butter pie, so you'll
Speaker 2: have more motivation to do it next time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The other way of thinking about it is the
Speaker 1: dopamine itself is the motivational signal. So it's what makes
Speaker 1: me get out of that bed and put on my
Speaker 1: clothes and actually go down those stairs, because I'm motivated
Speaker 1: to go get that reward.
Speaker 2: Right, And this is where that Awakenings anecdote comes in.
Speaker 1: Let's hear it.
Speaker 2: So you were talking about how, you know, the peanut
Speaker 2: butter pie motivating you to get out of bed and
Speaker 2: actually go. That definitely jibes with research, particularly something reported
Speaker 2: by Oliver Sachs in the book and then later the
Speaker 2: movie Awakenings. There was an epidemic of something called encephalitic lethargia,
Speaker 2: which is what happened to Robert de Niro's character. Remember
Speaker 2: as a boy, he caught this thing and he just
Speaker 2: kind of frozen place. It's where you develop Parkinson's symptoms
Speaker 2: so much that you just don't you can't move. You
Speaker 2: cannot move. You have you don't have the required dopamine
Speaker 2: to actually move, so you're just sitting there, frozen in
Speaker 2: place like a statue. But anybody who saw this movie
Speaker 2: remembers being amazed by this scene. If a certain patient
Speaker 2: is stimulated, their dopamine is stimulated just enough, they can
Speaker 2: actually overcome that being frozen in place. And so there's
Speaker 2: a famous scene where Oliver Sax tossed one of the
Speaker 2: patients some oranges and she caught them like she was
Speaker 2: a frozen sets and all of a sudden she's catching
Speaker 2: oranges and then juggles with them. Or there's another patient
Speaker 2: that was on the beach, I believe in their wheelchair
Speaker 2: saw someone drowning and was motivated to get up and
Speaker 2: go save the person and then come back and go
Speaker 2: back to this frozen statue kind of stasis.
Speaker 1: Great scene.
Speaker 2: It is so like that has to do with the
Speaker 2: motivational aspect of dopamine, and that given the right stimulus,
Speaker 2: even something that tremendous as just a crazy amount of
Speaker 2: parkins and symptoms can be overcome or overwhelmed by that
Speaker 2: dopamine hit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And then jumping back to that first one,
Speaker 1: the prediction era, they've done research on people who gamble,
Speaker 1: who play cards and play the slot machines and stuff,
Speaker 1: and their brains experience about the same amount of dopamine
Speaker 1: activity when they almost win. Like you got the big
Speaker 1: pot in the middle of the table you're playing poker,
Speaker 1: and you lose it the last second, your dopamine level
Speaker 1: will be about the same as if you had actually
Speaker 1: won it. Yes, which is pretty remarkable.
Speaker 2: And then I think it kind of qualifies as a
Speaker 2: third interpretation, The most current study I've seen sees dopamine
Speaker 2: is essentially the thing that allows us to learn. If
Speaker 2: you connect one thing to another, it's because dopamine had
Speaker 2: you make that connection, and then depending on what kind
Speaker 2: of effect those two things have on you, that connection
Speaker 2: might be very very strong, so you're motivated to go
Speaker 2: seek it out again. But at base, what dopamine is
Speaker 2: doing is allowing us to form connections. Imagine the world
Speaker 2: if we didn't connect one thing to another, like if
Speaker 2: I didn't connect turning on the computer and stepping up
Speaker 2: to the microphone and recording a podcast, like, we wouldn't
Speaker 2: do anything. We would just be completely lost if we
Speaker 2: couldn't make connections. And it seems like dopamine is the basis.
Speaker 1: Of all that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty cool, Like the whole world would suffer because
Speaker 2: we wouldn't be podcasting.
Speaker 1: Chuck, Oh, that's debatable. You know, were not poopooing the
Speaker 1: idea that addiction and dopamine are heavily tied with one another.
Speaker 1: We're just sort of trying to point out that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of other things at play when it comes
Speaker 1: to dopamine, and that sort of is unfairly maybe gotten
Speaker 1: all the press. But we do have to talk about
Speaker 1: it some more. We talked about it plenty of time,
Speaker 1: certainly in our Addiction podcast episodes, but it does play
Speaker 1: a pretty big role in drug abuse and addiction. It
Speaker 1: does reinforce the you know, the idea that you want
Speaker 1: to keep using those drugs because it's making you feel good.
Speaker 1: And when we're talking about you know, you're talking about
Speaker 1: the the woman juggling oranges in that movie, and how
Speaker 1: remarkable that is. If they've given you Parkinson's drugs and
Speaker 1: they just flood your brain with dopamine. They found that
Speaker 1: ten percent of the people that have had that treatment
Speaker 1: turn into gambling addicts. And I would imagine there are
Speaker 1: people who already gambled. I don't think it like drove
Speaker 1: them to start gambling, but that just goes to show
Speaker 1: you the power of like what a flood of dopamine
Speaker 1: will do to your brain, and it's pretty it's a
Speaker 1: pretty clunky way to deal with that, I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's what you were referring to earlier
Speaker 2: when you were saying, like that understanding of volume transmission,
Speaker 2: theory of dopamine release. That's what the drugs are based on,
Speaker 2: that understanding and that misunderstanding, and like, yeah, that's what happens.
Speaker 2: It's like, yes, if it does crawl across the brain
Speaker 2: and runs into whatever neurons that it can trigger, it's
Speaker 2: going to have all sorts of other knock on effects.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: So, I guess our current understanding of how dopamine relates
Speaker 2: to addiction is that it connects drugs with pleasure. And
Speaker 2: as I was saying before, the more intense the experience,
Speaker 2: especially the reward, you can have a negative experience, and
Speaker 2: I think they're starting to figure out dopamine has something
Speaker 2: to do with that too. But as far as we know,
Speaker 2: the more intense the reward, the greater the flood of dopamine,
Speaker 2: and so the greater the stronger the connection you make
Speaker 2: between you know, pressing a lever and a scientist giving
Speaker 2: you a bunch of math.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, but that is, to be clear, just part
Speaker 1: of the recipe of what leads to addiction. I don't
Speaker 1: maybe there are people out there saying that, but I
Speaker 1: don't know if anyone really is saying like it's all
Speaker 1: because of dopamine. No, it is part of the recipe
Speaker 1: in addition obviously to your genetics. Just the fact that
Speaker 1: drugs are out there and available and their environmental pressures
Speaker 1: and influences all kinds of reasons that people start to
Speaker 1: take drugs or continue to take drugs, and as far
Speaker 1: as the continuation, dopamine is definitely a part of it.
Speaker 2: Right, And so one of the ways that you learn
Speaker 2: to take drugs is not just from the fact that
Speaker 2: your brain is flooded with dopamine, which allows you to
Speaker 2: make that connection very strongly, but the brain actually changes
Speaker 2: in response to those increased floods of dopamine because it's
Speaker 2: not set up to release dopamine like that repeatedly over
Speaker 2: long periods of time. It can do it once in
Speaker 2: a while, yeah, but you can't really do it too
Speaker 2: often because then the brain responds by shutting down dopamine receptors.
Speaker 2: The problem is is that this means that you have
Speaker 2: to do more drugs to get that sensation as far
Speaker 2: as you know, and that's what creates the cycle of
Speaker 2: addiction that to me smells vaguely of being almost out
Speaker 2: of date.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: But it does make sense then that the ideal drug
Speaker 2: would trigger a maximum release of feel good chemicals but
Speaker 2: a minimum release of dopamine. If anybody could ever come
Speaker 2: up with a drug like that, people be able to
Speaker 2: do drugs all the time, they'd never get addicted.
Speaker 1: Sure, but you know they have other negative effects on
Speaker 1: the body.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, I can't forget about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. The other bad thing obviously, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: do the amount of drugs it takes to shut down
Speaker 1: your dopamine receptors, because your body's like wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: this isn't right. Let me shut this down. Is it's
Speaker 1: not just shutting down the dopamine receptor that makes you
Speaker 1: want to, you know, do more cocaine or whatever. It's
Speaker 1: just shutting your dopamine receptors down. So you mentioned it earlier, Anedonia,
Speaker 1: that's the idea that you don't receive pleasure from any activity.
Speaker 1: And if all of a sudden your dopamine has been
Speaker 1: shut down such because you've been doing drugs that you're
Speaker 1: not getting any kind of pleasant, feel good stimulation from life,
Speaker 1: then that could be another reason that you up your
Speaker 1: desire to do drugs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then there's one other factor involved that with
Speaker 2: fewer dopamine receptor sites. Remember you said that one of
Speaker 2: those dopaminergic pathways is really to executive function, like impulse control, responsibility,
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. Yeah, Well, with lower levels of dopamine,
Speaker 2: the theory goes that you are more likely to engage
Speaker 2: in reckless behavior to get drugs. You might do things
Speaker 2: that you normally wouldn't do, not because you're just this
Speaker 2: addict who has to have it, but partially also because
Speaker 2: you don't have the impulse control that you did before
Speaker 2: you became addicted to drugs in your dopamine receptor started
Speaker 2: shutting down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's I mean, we talked about
Speaker 1: it in the addiction app It's not just the effect
Speaker 1: that the drug has on your body, the negative effects
Speaker 1: that it physiologically has on your body, but the behaviors
Speaker 1: that you start engaging in when you're under the influence
Speaker 1: of drugs and want more drugs and maybe can't find
Speaker 1: the drugs. That's maybe almost worse than the physiological ramifications,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure. And it also ties in with
Speaker 2: risk taking because dopamine is connected to risk taking, and
Speaker 2: in fact, they found that some people seem to be
Speaker 2: biologically physiologically predisposed to risk taking based on their dopamine
Speaker 2: levels that in fact, they find that they have fewer
Speaker 2: what are called autoreceptors. Apparently, over time we've evolved to
Speaker 2: create on dopamine neural cells a site called the auto
Speaker 2: receptor that actually catches some of the dopamine. It helps
Speaker 2: regulate it, like it never makes it out, so it
Speaker 2: keeps the amount of dopamine down to a regulated level.
Speaker 2: So the fewer auto receptors you have, if you're still
Speaker 2: pumping out dopamine, you get a much greater impact from
Speaker 2: that dopamine. And they have correlated that to risk taking.
Speaker 2: People who have fewer dopaminergic auto receptors take more risks,
Speaker 2: at least according to some studies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they've also done studies where they found that
Speaker 1: that risk should or needs to be tied to a reward,
Speaker 1: like a gain Basically, there was a study from the
Speaker 1: University of College in London in twenty fifteen that said
Speaker 1: subjects whose dopamine levels was higher it was boosted artificially
Speaker 1: with medication would choose risky options more often if it
Speaker 1: involved a potential gain. They didn't see that same thing
Speaker 1: going on if there was a potential loss involved. So
Speaker 1: there's definitely a tie to a gain or another way
Speaker 1: of saying that would be a reward.
Speaker 2: Yes. And then also that impulse control is also a
Speaker 2: huge hallmark of ADHD symptoms, and so ADHD is very
Speaker 2: commonly associated with some sort of dopamine deficiency. And from
Speaker 2: what I've seen, there isn't a like an across the board.
Speaker 2: We haven't discovered some across the board type of brain
Speaker 2: that's like yep, if you have this brain, you have ADHD,
Speaker 2: and vice versa. And we're not even certain exactactly what
Speaker 2: effect the dopamine is having. We're almost just kind of
Speaker 2: like seeing effects that are the behavior of people with
Speaker 2: ADHD and saying, hey, we know that dopamine does that,
Speaker 2: or if you don't have dopamine, you're more likely to
Speaker 2: do this. So there's this correlation, it's just not it's
Speaker 2: never been like completely shown yet. I think it probably
Speaker 2: will be at some time. But we don't really know
Speaker 2: how ADHD is linked to dopamine. But there's or almost
Speaker 2: certain that dopamine drives at least some of the ADHD symptoms.
Speaker 2: It's just because of that, people have made leaps in understanding.
Speaker 2: Like there's a there's a long standing myth about people
Speaker 2: with ADHD that they do these impulsive behaviors to get
Speaker 2: a hit of dopamine. Well, it's based on that old
Speaker 2: idea that dopamine is a pleasure producing chemical or reward
Speaker 2: producing chemical, where instead it might be that people do
Speaker 2: these behaviors that are impulsive because they don't have the
Speaker 2: dopamine that can regulate their impulses and so they have
Speaker 2: less impulse control. We're just still sorting it out, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, should we take our final break here? Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll take a break and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: Oh boy, it's going to be so much fun social
Speaker 1: media right after this. All right, so we're back, and
Speaker 1: we promise talk of social media because I think everyone
Speaker 1: it's pretty hip to the fact now that notifications and
Speaker 1: the dings and the likes and the loves and the
Speaker 1: hearts and all the things that come to various interacting
Speaker 1: with veryarious social media platforms is so old, dude. I
Speaker 1: know that's great in this case, I love being old.
Speaker 1: I don't want any of it.
Speaker 2: I'm with you.
Speaker 1: But in any case, all of that stuff combines to
Speaker 1: give you a hit of dopamine. And it's specific and
Speaker 1: you know, like, fine, that's great whatever, but it's specifically
Speaker 1: structured and built that way and coded that way so
Speaker 1: that you will become addicted to that social media platform.
Speaker 1: And they have admitted as such. In twenty eighteen. It
Speaker 1: was it was a big news item when they were
Speaker 1: I don't know, it was like congressional testimony or something.
Speaker 1: I can't remember exactly, but there was a VP at
Speaker 1: Facebook who came out and was basically like, hey, this
Speaker 1: is something we did on purpose and it was a
Speaker 1: core foundation. Was the really the quote that kind of
Speaker 1: stuck out with how people behave using our platform, like
Speaker 1: it was a part of the core strategy to get
Speaker 1: p people to come back again and again and again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that strategy was based on This was a
Speaker 2: Chamath Polyhapedia who was a VP of User Development at Facebook,
Speaker 2: and they said that this was based on short term
Speaker 2: dopamine driven feedback loops. And you know, this is all
Speaker 2: old news to us now. I mean this was six
Speaker 2: years ago. Think about how much our understanding of what
Speaker 2: social media does to us. But in twenty eighteen, that
Speaker 2: was a groundbreaking admission. But it's true, and I mean
Speaker 2: that's essentially how social media works. Like you get the
Speaker 2: app and you start to realize that if that little
Speaker 2: badge number comes up and says, hey, you have like
Speaker 2: two notifications, you go into it, you're going to get
Speaker 2: some sort of reward of some sort. You're going to,
Speaker 2: like you said, get a ding or a like or
Speaker 2: a heart or something like that, and that is a
Speaker 2: reward to you. And so, based on the mesolimbic theory
Speaker 2: of dopemine, we get it. Dopamine hit and so we
Speaker 2: learned to come back. And apparently also randomness has a
Speaker 2: lot to do with it, because the as we start
Speaker 2: to be able to predict when we'll get a reward,
Speaker 2: that dopamine stops being a part of that whole experience.
Speaker 2: So if it can be done randomly, we don't know
Speaker 2: when we're going to get a reward. It has a
Speaker 2: maximum effect of releasing dopamine and thus teaching us to
Speaker 2: go back to social media over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. There's also this psychiatrist name doctor Cameron s
Speaker 1: ep Ah. I guess Sepa is how you said that?
Speaker 2: Sepa or Sepa okay.
Speaker 1: One of those three who came out and said, all right,
Speaker 1: there's this term that I'm going to float out there,
Speaker 1: and it's called a dopamine fast. And the idea when
Speaker 1: that was floated was people heard that and they said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: dopamine just means just it's just to catch all term
Speaker 1: basically for any sort of addictive behavior like reinforcement. And
Speaker 1: you can go on a dopamine fast and like you know,
Speaker 1: put that, put that social media app down for a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, and when you come back, it's just
Speaker 1: gonna like your brain's gonna have a little rest from
Speaker 1: that thing and you're gonna feel amazing about how much
Speaker 1: you love it when you come back. And that's not
Speaker 1: at all what doctor Cameron was talking about or meant.
Speaker 2: No, huh, Doctor doctor Sipa Seppa was basically saying like
Speaker 2: like he really misused dopamine fast and even said to
Speaker 2: The New York Times like, I didn't mean it like that.
Speaker 2: Don't don't take it like that. I don't mean it literally.
Speaker 2: Everybody said, too late, we're gonna take it literally. And
Speaker 2: so there was this this movement I think people still
Speaker 2: do it, of self denial of everything, from like people
Speaker 2: stopped interacting with other people, people stopped eating food they
Speaker 2: found pleasurable, they stopped talking if they didn't need to
Speaker 2: anything that could conceivably give you a release of dopamine,
Speaker 2: and the whole their premise was that if they did that,
Speaker 2: it would be like going and drying out on heroin
Speaker 2: or cocaine, so that when you come back, that first
Speaker 2: experience again with heroin or cocaine is that much more
Speaker 2: amazing because you've kind of replenished your endocannabinoids and opioids
Speaker 2: and all that stuff. Dopamine does not work like that.
Speaker 2: If you stop flooding your brain with dopamine, it doesn't replenish,
Speaker 2: it doesn't need to replenish. That's not how it works.
Speaker 2: But that's what people were doing. They just completely misinterpreted it,
Speaker 2: and it was based on faulty science and doctor Sipa
Speaker 2: essentially using the wrong term.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the idea that he was talking about,
Speaker 1: was Hey, put that stuff down and go do other
Speaker 1: things that you find pleasure in right live in the world,
Speaker 1: or go out in nature, or you know, kind of
Speaker 1: get a hold of your life again so you don't
Speaker 1: feel like you're, you know, tied to this social media
Speaker 1: app for your happiness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, our moms used to call it going to play
Speaker 2: outside for a while or summer, I think is another
Speaker 2: term it used to be called. But instead this guy
Speaker 2: called it a dopamine fast, and people really took a
Speaker 2: left turn with it. So he identified six compulsive behaviors
Speaker 2: or categories that he was saying, you could really, you
Speaker 2: could really do a good for yourself by taking a
Speaker 2: dopamine fast or a break from emotional eating, excessive internet
Speaker 2: usage and gaming, gambling and shopping, porn and masturbation, thrill
Speaker 2: and novelty seeking, which I took to mean taking a
Speaker 2: break from thrill, kill, murder spreeze, and recreational drugs. But
Speaker 2: he also said, you know, anything that you feel like
Speaker 2: has got a hold on your life, if you just
Speaker 2: stop and step away from it, it will have less
Speaker 2: a whole of your life. So TV would definitely be
Speaker 2: in there probably for a lot of people but if
Speaker 2: you step back and look at what this guy's talking about,
Speaker 2: it's the most basic thing that people have been doing
Speaker 2: for eons, and yet just by slapping dopamine fast on it,
Speaker 2: it became sticky and buzzy and brainstormy or java stormy
Speaker 2: and like super corporate, and people just really got into
Speaker 2: it and started thinking, like, you know, if I fast
Speaker 2: from dopamine when I come back, I'm gonna have so
Speaker 2: much dopamine that I'm going to be the most motivated, focused,
Speaker 2: greatest ux PM of all time. Yeah, and that's just
Speaker 2: not how it works, unfortunately.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that's a weird way to end this
Speaker 2: whole thing, but that's how it ends.
Speaker 1: Huh Yeah, I mean that's our current understanding.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I feel like this is one we would be
Speaker 2: able to do five years from now, is to kind
Speaker 2: of revisit what do you think? Nah?
Speaker 1: Okay, I mean we've never done that.
Speaker 2: That's dopamine as we understand it in twenty twenty four, everybody.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: If you want to know more about dopamine, go out
Speaker 2: and read about it, but be very specific and selective
Speaker 2: of who you go read. There are some popular people
Speaker 2: who know what they're talking about out there, but there's
Speaker 2: plenty that don't. So I guess if you run across
Speaker 2: somebody who refers to dopamine as a pleasure chemical or
Speaker 2: something like that, just turn around and walk away and
Speaker 2: go find somebody else. How about that, Chuck.
Speaker 1: That sounds good, Chuck.
Speaker 2: So that sounds good everybody, and that means it's time
Speaker 2: for listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call this from a conductor. We heard
Speaker 1: from quite a few conductors so far, and that's just
Speaker 1: on day one after release. So it's pretty great to
Speaker 1: know that there are people out there that know about
Speaker 1: this stuff better than we do.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, thank you so much for the episode about conductors.
Speaker 1: I squealed with joy when I saw it in my
Speaker 1: feed as they started my hour long commute. I teach
Speaker 1: high school orchestra and I'm an orchid stroll orchestral excuse me,
Speaker 1: a musician with former aspirations of becoming a professional conductor.
Speaker 1: So it's fun to hear an outsider's perspective. You're wondering
Speaker 1: what exactly is on each musician's stand during a performance.
Speaker 1: I love Chuck's analogy of it being like an actors
Speaker 1: script with only their lines, and that's pretty close. But
Speaker 1: sometimes there are small annotations of what to listen for
Speaker 1: from other sections of the orchestra, particularly after a long
Speaker 1: section of inactive playing or rests, to help figure out
Speaker 1: where you are in the music. That's the part. Remember,
Speaker 1: I just couldn't believe there'd be like nothing to cue you,
Speaker 1: and I saw other stuff where there were sometimes numeric notations,
Speaker 1: and other conductors that there were long bars and things
Speaker 1: that you would pay attention to. Back to the email, though,
Speaker 1: this is another key job of the conductor which you
Speaker 1: didn't touch on as much as they have the entire score.
Speaker 1: They often give entrance cues to specific instrumentalists or sections. Additionally,
Speaker 1: there are usually rehearsal markers that delineate the beginnings of
Speaker 1: phrases or larger sections. This not only makes rehearsing easier,
Speaker 1: but also gives greater structure and scaffolding to the player.
Speaker 1: It's similar to punctuation or paragraph structure and a novel.
Speaker 1: Experienced musicians can often almost more or less feel their
Speaker 1: entrances based on their contextual knowledge of the piece and
Speaker 1: the music phrasing. There's an old adage that you spend
Speaker 1: your time practicing at home to learn your part. Rehearsal
Speaker 1: time is spent learning everyone else's.
Speaker 2: Oh that's cool, it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: The conductor's facilitator of this process. You hit the nail
Speaker 1: on the head, guys, the interpreter of the score. That
Speaker 1: is from Brittany Man Chuck.
Speaker 2: We did it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got I think four or five conductors all
Speaker 1: wrote in and said like, we did a pretty darn
Speaker 1: good job on it. So that feels great.
Speaker 2: Tell me they said bravo.
Speaker 1: I didn't see a Bravo.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I mean we'll get one someday. Yeah, that's pretty goot.
Speaker 2: Who is that from Brittany? Yeah, Brittany, thanks a lot, Brittany,
Speaker 2: ciate that. And to all the conductors who wrote in,
Speaker 2: Thank you to you all. And if you want to
Speaker 2: be like all the conductors who wrote in like Brittany,
Speaker 2: you can send us an email to send it off
Speaker 2: to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You Know.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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