From this understanding--the difference between possessing something versus anticipating it--we can understand in a revolutionary new way why we behave as we do in love, business, addiction, politics, religion - and we can even predict those behaviors in ourselves and others. The undue influence Dopamine exerts is amazing considering the fraction the Dopamine circuit occupies in our brains.

Leyendo The Molecule of More (libro recomendado por el propio Huberman en uno de los episodios del podcast) he tenido la misma sensación ya que parece imposible que un único neurotransmisor, la dopamina, sea la explicación de tantos y tan dispares comportamientos humanos. What I hate about this type of books is that it tricks you into believing that it taught you something new and you understood a complicated concept. Our authors cautious us, noting that “in an environment of plenty in which we have mastered our world and developed sophisticated technology—in a time when more is no longer a matter of survival—dopamine continues to drive us forward, perhaps to our own destruction.

Lieberman is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University. I found it both fascinating and hard to put down (no doubt reading it stimulated dopamine release in me! 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.

Lieberman is highly entertaining, mixing the hard science with entertaining elements to make it more vivid, transporting it directly into the long term memory, except of course one is too stoned on dopamine and the data transmission affected by too much of whatever emotion. I liked the chapters Domination and Politics the most, because we tend to forget that we are mentally unstable monkey with different nuances of madness from eccentricity to bonkers and completely manipulated by the substances our body produces and how we tend to condition ourselves to react in a way that might be evolutionarily useful. Tengo un amigo que cuando escuchó por primera vez el podcast del neurocientífico de Stanford, Andrew Huberman, me dijo: “El tío mola mucho y es una pasada escucharle… una pena que se lo invente todo”. As Nietzsche would point out, most of modern science adds new layers to a problem, new questions, new conceptualizations, but no new answer.

Is the steak you’re eating for dinner right now really that good, or will the pizza you’ve got planned for tomorrow night be better? Those who are very liberal tend to be more intelligent than conservatives and they also tend to be more likely to cheat on their spouse in a relationship.

Pe lângă informațiile pe care le-am aflat, am învățat să înțeleg mai bine oamenii din jurul meu, dar și pe mine. Thousands of years later, it is the source of our most basic behaviors and cultural ideas―and progress itself. Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more--more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. For the first time, I see the intimate game between dopamine and serotonin playing out in my own thoughts and actions.The only situation in which this book could be useful is if you just didn't know anything about anything. Even if the information is for professionals anybody can read it, its language is easy to understand.