Creativitatea reflectă creierul în forma sa cea mai elevată. Boala mintală este opusul.” Cel mai interesant capitol mi s-a părut cel despre creativitate și nebunie. Se vorbește despre saliență, vise, boli, modele mentale artă și altele, toate prin prisma dopaminei. Also, on a side note, for the love of God and all you hold dear, please stop this nonsense encountered so often in nonfiction books of introducing concepts as follows: Ironically the dopamine circuits in the brains of humans have been responsible for the staggering heights of accomplishment and achievement but will also (paradoxically) bring about the demise of said humans. Why do we crave what we don’t have rather than feel good about what we do—and why do fools fall in love? Haunting questions of human biology are answered by The Molecule of More, a must-read about the human condition.”

Understanding why we do the dangerous and unhealthy stuff is the roadmap to creating the best possible life. Now I see clearly how these books don't actually answer anything: they just use other terminology. For instance, to the question: why are we anxious? A book like this answers: Oh, simple, you see, it's because of a neurotransmitter called dopamine.

Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more--more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge, that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put, it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet, at the same time, it's why we gamble and squander. Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more—more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge, that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put, it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet, at the same time, it’s why we gamble and squander.

In schizophrenia the brain short-circuits, attaching salience to ordinary things that ought to be familiar and therefore ignored. Another name for this is low latent inhibition. The crux of our behaviour boils down to two outlooks we humans have – here & now matters (which the authors refer to as the H&N circuit) and the future (our desires and actions). Dopamine is largely what determines how we approach the future – high dopamine defining the drive. Dopamine circuits are in two categories – ones which determine our desires and the other which exerts control over our actions.In the past, when I was even more naïve as to how the world works than I am today, I'd think this book explained a lot of human nature. When an expected reward fails to materialize, the dopamine firing rate drops to zero, and that feels terrible. Such a conflation of correlation with causation is a feature throughout. Yes, it is interesting that a disproportionate number of American Nobel laureates have been immigrants, but the claim that the “United States has been shaped by dopaminergic immigrants” wants supporting evidence, as does the citation of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America that the nation was “expanded on the dopaminergic theme of never enough.”

Oversimplified and overgeneralised. I was hoping for an in-depth look at the science but honestly felt like I didn't learn anything new because the book didn't dwell into studies and science and instead spent a lot of time on its theories on relationships, liberals vs conservative personalities, and the future of the human race. Every chemical other than dopamine was actually simplified into "here and now molecules", that's how unwilling this book is to talk about the science of the brain. The chapter on mental models was alright to listen to, so rating two stars.Just as dopamine is the molecule of obsessive yearning, the chemicals most associated with long-term relationships are oxytocin and vasopressin. Chapter 2: Drugs............................................................................................................. 45 Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more—more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge, that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put, it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet, at the same time, it's why we gamble and squander. Jim Watson, who deciphered the genetic code, famously said, ‘There are only molecules; the rest is sociology,’ adding fuel to C. P. Snow’s complaint that Science and the humanities are two fundamentally different “cultures” which will never meet. The authors argue provocatively, yet convincingly, that the molecule that allows us to bridge the chasm between them is dopamine. Though written for ordinary people, the narrative is sprinkled throughout with dazzling new insights that will appeal equally to specialists.” In The Molecule of More, George Washington University professor and psychiatrist Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD, and Georgetown University lecturer Michael E. Long present a potentially life-changing proposal: Much of human life has an unconsidered component that explains an array of behaviors previously thought to be unrelated, including why winners cheat, why geniuses often suffer from mental illness, why nearly all diets fail, and why the brains of liberals and conservatives really are different.