"Tame" your dopamine and be the master of desire

Now invite you to do a move:

Looking up on the road, what can you see? Pedestrians, cafes, and even some shared bikes stored. Look up, and what can you see? Blue skies, white clouds, houses. How are they different and identical?

The things in front of you can be accessed, even without planning, like the "water cup" on the table at home, which can be done with your fingertips; things from afar may require some time and even energy to get them.

Doesn't that sound funny? In fact, the brain treats it as a "dividing line".

The two sides are flanked by different ways of thinking, and the head-up world is controlled by chemicals called "neurotransmitters" that allow you to experience the thrill of contentment, and it occasionally teaches you to enjoy the moment, or to respond to fight or flight.

The "online world" corresponds to a different chemistry, which motivates you to pursue what you don't have and drives you to find it; if you obey it, you will be rewarded; if you don't obey it, it is very painful.

That's why "looking up at the sky and being down-to-earth" is the perfect combination.

The sky is the engine of dreams, the fuel of struggle, and the power source for a person to hold his head high again in the face of setbacks, and stepping on the ground represents that if you want to be rich in life, you must pay execution.

But many people are full of morale at the beginning, and the more information they receive as they get older, they will be less motivated? Here we have to mention the "engine" of desire, dopamine (DA).

Place of birth and role

It is a neurotransmitter of the central and autonomic nervous systems; in the 1950s, Professor Arvid Carlsson, a professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, discovered it in his research and won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Biology.

You may wonder, where does it live?

In the basal ganglia of the brain there are two routes, substantia Nigra and ventral tegmental area, which release it separately, causing different physiological responses.

The dopamine released by the former is fragile and is mainly responsible for autonomous movement and regulatory control.

For example: maintaining a pose or performing an action. But the problem is that "some unknown cause" often causes nerve cell damage, and then there will be symptoms such as hand shaking and walking, and in severe cases, Parkinson's disease (PD).

The latter is tenacious and mainly responsible for decision-making.

This route leads to anterior cingulate gyrus, the orbitofrontal cortex to the prefrontal cortex, commonly known as the "midbrain-sebum pathway"; to some extent " decisions are more important than effort " , but here it generally refers to "choice of action" and "learning" parts.

All actions are inhibited by the basal nucleus before making a decision (I try to control myself as much as I can, as long as I'm not tempted), and when I assume that something is self-beneficial from an instinctive need, the switch is turned on, and the loop is out of control.

As with "learning", the basal nucleus issues action A and after the implementation of the dopamine is improved, the pathway will also change, so that the next time you encounter a similar scene, you will actively choose the old path.

It's also a methodology that forms from neuroscience, personal cognitive experience; it looks rational, right?

However, there is also a small part of dopamine that comes out of the ventral cover area, which does not go far, to the accumbens nucleus, and has long formed a "midbrain-marginal pathway" (reward pathway).

The higher the desire for dopamine along the way, the more technical terms it controls incentive Salience; for example:

People who have earned 1 billion yuan talk to it about 10 million business is not at all, if you give me different attention; in other words, for different people, under the change of time and environment, there will be different significance, and its formation is generally divided into "inside and outside" two aspects.

Primary rewards for internality come from emotions, influences, minds, etc. that promote self-and offspring survival, including positive effects of joy and delicious food, sex-to-sex contact, etc.; often unconditional behavior, because it is inherently pleasurable.

Extrinsic rewards have conditional limits to laws of attraction and motivating behaviors that are not pleasant; like money, watching athletes win a game, value investment, etc.

The combination of the inside and outside also produces "motivational value", which is the important thing behind the switching power behind the moving base core.

Under the classic inner reward conditions, external rewards will also trigger happiness, the lottery is a good case, when you invest 10 yuan to win a 15 yuan reward, the excitement of driving 20 yuan additional will slowly come.

It is worth mentioning that the survival of most animal species depends on "maximizing exposure to beneficial stimuli" and "minimizing exposure to harmful stimuli".

Reward cognition then increases the likelihood of survival and reproduction by inducing associative learning, eliciting methods to accomplish behavior, and emotions with positive effects, so rewards are an evolutionary mechanism that helps improve adaptability.

In addition, dopamine has three effects: 1) to change feeding behavior, 2) fear and anxiety, and 3) to sleep and wake.

In neuroscience, the brain has a homeostasis regulatory center for eating behavior, usually the hypothalamus site integration control of a person's appetite, energy homeostasis, to achieve the effect of stimulating neuronal signals to control weight.

Dopamine DA cells pars compacta (A8) releasable in the "substantia nigra" region will change due to the application of improper doses of drugs and diet due to daily illness, resulting in reward signals involving "reward prediction code" bias in behavioral learning.

This also explains why people with diabetes consume insulin daily to mediate their state.

The reason for this is that insulin lowers dopamine levels in specific areas of the brain ,the "striatum" (where the substantia pathway reaches), an interaction that is an important driver of the brain's regulation of glucose metabolism and eating behavior.

So, when we were young, it made perfect sense for our parents to teach us that foods that were too sweet were too sweet, and although they didn't know the "specific reasons," they at least realized that they were addictive.

Researchers at the German Diabetes Research Centre (DZD) at the University of Tübingen just proved its importance, which was invented in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

Secondly, desires and emotions arise from a low-frequency ability to think.

Dopamine as a body substance is just the opposite, the former is invisible, the latter is tangible, when the mind is restless, people will produce "emotions and desires" due to external interference, and then become a desire for happiness.

For example, brush your phone:

From short videos to graphics and texts, most of them are in the state of non-stop clicking the next one, even if it is very tired, the reward system will hint that you are "more exciting down"; the consequences of long-term repetition produce "behavioral addiction", and when you cannot resist the internal psychological needs, you will fall into panic and anxiety.

In addition, a large number of data in the past have shown that dopamine neurons are key transmitters that regulate sleep and wake function, but the specific role of the process is not yet clear.

Although clinical data show that Parkinson's disease will experience daytime sleepiness and schizophrenia due to hyperfunction of neurons, many of the above effects are the results of animal experiments and are not necessarily the case in humans.

In addition, what happens if dopamine is secreted too much or too little?

More or less is a bad thing

Suppose you stay up late, play on your phone, and overeat often and cause secretory disorders.

Too much dopamine release in a certain period of time will be reduced in other periods, so it is easy to appear mental atrophy, self-flow decreased; severe cases of sudden irritability in the process of doing things, memory decline state occurs.

You know, people's attention and investment in things play an absolute role, the so-called memory decline is to reduce the energy of the things that should be paid attention to, and slowly degenerate.

With age and dietary absorption imbalance, dopamine will appear to be in a state of deviation in intake; the first signal of physical feedback after it falls below the critical point is manifested in "mood and sorrow", and the most common contemporary is bipolar affective disorder.

How to understand?

Generally refers to emotional disorders, that is, a type of mood disorder with manic and hypomanic attacks, and depressive episodes; it will have a negative impact on our daily social interactions.

As of 2022, according to statistics, the national average incidence rate is 2% to 3%, and in some countries it is as high as 5% to 7%; seeing the proportion, you may think, is it not my turn?

In fact, this symptom is generally difficult to identify, it is specifically manifested as emotional fragility, irritability, forced crying, pathological passion and other aspects.

Some people often feel sad or excited because of some trivial things, a little thing angry and angry for a day, and even without the influence of any external factors, suddenly uncontrollably associated with certain things, laughing and crying.

These are the more common phenomena of cerebral organ mental disorders.

That is to say, when the manic attack will have emotional upswing, speech activities increased and energetic phenomena; when it is lowered, it often shows low mood, can not lift the loss of motivation and pleasure, and even less speech, social, fatigue and dullness.

In this comparison, I feel that myself is seated in the right number of minutes.

In addition, mild patients are often misdiagnosed as depression, and the main reasons for its occurrence are: 1) genetic elements, 2) neurobiochemical elements, 3) neurosecretion function, and 4) psychosocial factors.

Genetic and social factors aside, the focus needs to be on "endocrine function", and while excessive (more and less) activity of dopamine is not the only mysterious black hand, it plays an important role.

It should be known that the DRD2 TaqI A1 ecological niche and A2A2 in dopamine are located 10Kb downstream of DR D2 and belong to the protein region of adjacent memory.

This gene, called protein repeat domain protein kinase 1 (ANKK1), is closely related to mood regulation, and glucose metabolism and DRD2 density can lead to changes in the A1 gene leading to mood disorders.

Maybe you think it's complicated, right? In a word, it is summed up as "too much and too little will make your state of mind change"; how to effectively prevent such a state from happening? Many people will say not to eat carbs and brush less mobile phones.

In fact, no matter whether you decrease or increase your body, you will feel uncomfortable, after all, this is a behavioral habit that has been cultivated for decades from birth to the present.

There is nothing wrong with dopamine itself, the problem is that people don't distinguish between the other side of the reward system of pleasure: 1) fleeting excitement, 2) sustained gratification, and 3) conquest.

When imagining something, the brain (dopamine-related organisms) generates activity that increases the person's nervousness, and it represents immediate pleasures, such as:

When hunger comes, you imagine that you can eat your favorite Coke chicken wings, you will have a sense of excitement, and at this moment insulin begins to rise; after eating, the blood sugar rises sharply and drops sharply, and this initial happiness will be low and tired with the satisfaction of excitement.

And what about continuous gratification?

I call it the calm, comfort that comes with completion; although it is a lasting happiness, it is also divided into two different states, such as when hungry, thinking of eating meat and vegetables, and immediately having it, and after getting it, the blood sugar fluctuates slightly, the mood is stable, and the experience is healthy.

However, if conditions do not allow you, you can only face the beef ramen in front of you to fill your hunger, and the result will change.

The reward system of dopamine secretion will send a signal of "look very fragrant, I don't get it, others have it, I also have it", and then plant a foreshadowing in your mind; then you will have "envy and jealousy", which will raise the threshold followed by the rise of emotional instability, and over time the mood disorder will enter the psychology.

For some physical and mental experiences that can be quickly satisfied with money and action, another situation of "conquest" begins to appear.

That is, I not only have to, but also have to continue to have, but also to dominate.

You see, such dopamine stimulation can easily enter a vicious circle and eventually hurt your brain and body; you can understand the mechanism of love, charm, and fantasy in life.

Love charm and fantasy

What is love? American anthropologist Helen Fisher once proposed three states of love: 1) desire, 2) attraction, and 3) attachment.

The human brain has a love production line, and when encountering him, the wonderful neural information will be transmitted on the ventral side of the brain by the cover area, the nucleus accumbens and the caudate nucleus, which is fascinating.

Every move, the clothes they wear, the shampoo they use are all happy; however, dopamine creates a reward prediction error.

In simple terms:

The first time you help your parents with housework, your mom rewards $5 in cash to buy something you like; you didn't expect to receive cash (i.e., the pre-prediction got a value of 0), so it would be a surprise (prediction error).

The moment the cash is received, the reward error causes a strong release of dopamine for a short time.

Interestingly, when you associate "doing housework" with "receiving a reward," the next time dopamine release is advanced to "in the action of doing housework" or "before."

I often say that this is called early overdraft.

In the past, I would have such a situation when I was writing, when an article brought millions of views on social media, the next time I started writing, I would overdraft the "happiness after writing" in advance, but the result after completion would always plummet, have you ever had a similar state?

This also explains why dopamine in the reward mechanism, can not fail to mention "prediction", it is very important to find, aware of this element, you can really understand the meaning of the four words "lower expectations".

Compared to love, when you receive sweet words from lovers, or meet a charming new partner at a broken table in an old bar in Dali, you will predict the reward.

When you get used to it and even the next time you meet it, the freshness will be reduced; so, will love disappear?

I don't seem to be willing to answer this question (it seems like a scumbag), but the brain is born with a desire for unexpected surprises and therefore for the future, and every exciting desire, change, and improvement is born there.

The study believes that the rest of the 3.5 years with a person is not "love" at all, but companionship and family love with a face full of disgust; there is a saying in the American movie "War Horse" that I remember vividly: "I will hate you more because of the separation of love, but I will not love you again."

Of course, if you have been troubled by love or are facing this stage, you can only sigh and share a sentence in the "Complete Poetry of Cangyang Gyatso": "Love and can't, get without hesitation, let go, lose and don't want"; isn't reality half surprise, half regret, reconcile with your own instincts.

The same is true of glamour, which arises when we see that good things stimulate dopamine to bring imagination overwhelmed by the ability to accurately perceive the reality of the moment.

Let me give you an example:

When you brush short videos or take a plane, what kind of thoughts and feelings will you have when you see beautiful scenery and planes soaring in the sky? Many people want to escape from the north, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen to let go of all the ends of the world and travel and spend time on the clouds.

Again, what would be more glamorous than Hollywood? Isn't it beautiful for the glamorous actors to go to the prom in Sanya, lined up around the pool, but don't you forget what reality is? Sweating under the lights, you're still staying up late working overtime.

These are just the illusions given by dopamine, how can we effectively control the reward error brought about by self-dopamine to ensure that self-action becomes stronger and the actual harm after the expectation is raised? I think the fundamental change is substitution.

Make it a mercenary

You used to listen to it, now you can handle it completely; the release of dopamine comes from neuronal stimulation, and a range of techniques now pave the way for neuroscience.

Allowing people to expand from small neural circuits to "the whole brain", starting from technology, a new generation of receptors can repair metabolically injured neuronal receptors.

Neuroscientists believe that the generation of desire is the result of certain functions that guide the training of neurotransmitters, and that behavior can certainly be shaped.

In general, the space released from one neuron to the synapse, which is connected with another neuron in just a few milliseconds, opens the ionic receptor protein; allowing ions and other electrical ions to pour into new neurons, changing the internal voltage and creating new circuits.

Another explanation: academic records have 14 billion to 16 billion neurons in the brain, they are like a train open to all parts of the country, your action of brushing short videos and smoking is a fixed circuit, each time you can bring new stimulation, but behind it has been strengthening the direction of a car.

We need to change "these directions" and move them into the "game" of high-level fun.

It's like why do people chase girls addicted and drink addicted? And some people drink tea, get used to doing business in high-class fun, making money, and investing?

Because low-level fun can no longer satisfy them, they have gone from the well-off stage of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to the pursuit of "self-actualization"; this is more satisfying than lust and materialism.

Eve Marder, a neuroscientist at Brandeis University, says neurotransmitters travel throughout the brain by traveling, allowing us to control excitability in a large area of the brain more or less in the same way.

It can be said that you can carry out local or even broader coverage of "brainwashing" in order to change the state of the brain train network.

Think about it, isn't the following behavior terrible?

Keep turning on social media to see if anyone has sent you a message; repeatedly opening the content community homepage to find out if there is new content of interest, the incentives from the internet are constantly seducing your brain, and every comment like is rewarding feedback.

They are like desserts, nourishing and activating dopamine-related neurons, and what really makes online media so addicted is the "uncertainty of rewards."

Can you be the Big V tomorrow? Does he love me or not? Many things in life that make people feel happy are driven by its uncertainty to want to find "certainty", and when everything is uncertain, you will slowly become addicted on the road of pursuit.

Alternative methodology, you can try "dopamine withdrawal".

The concept was developed by American psychiatrist Cameron Sepa (Dr. Cameron Sypa). Cameron Sepah proposed that instead of blocking the production of dopamine, it was to regulate the function of the dopamine receptor.

In simple terms, it is based on cognitive behavioral therapy, which reduces the need for dopamine by reducing compulsive pleasure behaviors, resetting sensitivity, getting rid of addiction, such as: irrational online shopping, eating junk food, sex, playing games...

How?

First examine yourself, list which behaviors make you addicted, arrange them in turn according to the degree of distress, and completely eliminate the most troublesome behaviors from life; give a relatively low proportion of activities a daily length, annoying and love to watch THE APP should be deleted.

Then enlarge the proportion of life.

You can find sources of happiness that don't rely on electronic screens, meet friends, play ball, and by the way, divert the pain of quitting unhealthy ways of entertainment.

It is recommended to use the principle of focus when arranging activities, I write, often sit still for three hours, and do nothing but drink water halfway through.

It is worth mentioning that sun exposure is also a good choice, with longer sun exposure, better striatal dopamine receptor activity, and a higher happiness index.

Judson Brewer, a neuroscientist who studies addiction, believes that desire-driven dopamine is not cultivated in a day, and forced withdrawal is difficult to maintain; it is really inseparable from the things that are very liked, and they will return to the original scene again.

If it's wrong behavior, you really need to re-examine the will to change yourself; until you fully realize that dopamine is not a reward for you, but a tired and bad life, maybe you will be on the right path.

Addiction is difficult to quit, which also verifies why some people say "look at the phone to brush information for a day really want to vomit and want to watch", do not become a mercenary of dopamine reward mechanism desire, learn to let it be controlled by you.

To sum up

Ancient Greek Socrates, after being sentenced to death, was given the opportunity to flee, but finally chose to drink alcohol and poison and die, only to strengthen his belief that he believed to be right. The phrase "an unexamined life is not worth living" has been passed down through the ages.

I didn't understand it before and still "don't understand" it, saying in a dopamine tone: "You don't examine, I'm like this", "You have to take care of me, listen to your dispatches".

Academic References:

Nestler EJ, Carlezon WA Jr. Depression in the limbic dopamine reward circuit. biology. psychiatry. （2006）; 59：1151-1159。 doi：10.1016 / j.biopsych.2005.09.018。

Kenny PJ is common in the cellular and molecular mechanisms of obesity and drug addiction. Nat. Rev. Neurosci。 （2011）; 12：638-651。 doi：10.1038 / nrn3105。

Nanjing Normal University: Interaction between DRD4 and family intimacy and contradiction on prosocial tendencies of college students Wang Yunqiang et al.; 2022.07