How to Maximize Dopamine & Motivation - Andrew Huberman

i think one of the most important findings  in the last few years in neuroscience is that   while the molecule dopamine is associated with  reward it's more about motivation and craving   there's a really classic experiment now that  people use to demonstrate this take two rats   and the rats independently separate cages can  lever press for food or when they can access food   there's a little bit of dopamine that's released  anytime they get some food so we always thought   that food like many other rewards like food sex  warmth when you're cold cool when you're too warm   is triggering the release of dopamine but someone  had the good idea to deplete dopamine in one of   those animals and then what you find is that the  animal without dopamine still enjoys food still   enjoys other pleasures so dopamine is not really  involved in the enjoyment of those pleasures   it's involved in motivation because if you make  the animal have to move just one rat's length   believe it or not to get to that lever the animal  with dopamine will work to go get that thing it   will work through some effort to go get the reward  whereas the animal or turns out the human without   much dopamine can still experience pleasure they  can sit on their couch and cram their face with   pleasure inducing calories or what have  you watch pleasure inducing things on the   television but they have very little motivation to  go pursue things that will deliver them pleasure   it's actually what's really driven the forward  evolution of our our species has been the desire   to go seek things beyond the confines of our  skin and when i say the common currency is   dopamine what i mean is the molecule dopamine  when secreted in the brain makes us pursue   things build things create things makes us want  new things that we don't currently already have   and so it has a lot of dimensions to it but rather  than think about dopamine as a signal for reward   like a dopamine hit we classically think to talk  about it it's more accurate really to think about   dopamine as driving motivation and craving to  go seek rewards that's the rad experiment and   it's a way of tabulating where we are in our life  are we doing well or are we doing poorly and that   happens on very short time scales like you wake up  feeling good or do you wake up feeling kind of low   or on long time scales if you're halfway through  a long degree or you're halfway through your life   how are you doing how do you gauge that well it  has everything to do with how much dopamine you   were releasing in the previous days and weeks and  years so you're always comparing and all of this   is subconscious but what's cool is that once you  make these processes conscious once you understand   a little bit about how dopamine is released and  how it changes our perspective and our behavior   then you can actually work with it and so  we go back to this example the person that's   not motivated that can't get off the couch  that doesn't want to do anything well this   is the problem they are effectively the rat  with no dopamine but they can still achieve   some sense of pleasure by consuming excess  calories by consuming social media and look i'm   not judging i do this stuff too right scrolling  social media if you've ever scrolled social media   and you're like i don't even know why i'm  doing this it doesn't really feel that good   and i can remember a time where you'd  see something it was just so cool or you   see something online i remember this when ted  talks first came out i was like this is amazing   these are some at least some of them are really  smart people sharing really cool insights   and then now that they're like a gazillion ted  talks i remember spending a winter in my office at   when i was a junior professor cleaning my office  finally and binging ted talks in the background   thinking this is a good use of my time pretty soon  they all sucked to me i was like this isn't good   so what you need to do is stop watching dead docs  for a while wait and then they become interesting   again and that's this pain pleasure balance and  so for people that aren't feeling motivated the   problem is they're not motivated but they're  getting just enough or excess sustenance so   they're getting the little mild hits of opioid  it becomes an opioid system and if you think   about the opioid drugs as opposed to dopamine  dopaminergic drugs dopaminergic drugs make people   rabid for everything you know drugs of abuse  like cocaine amphetamine make people incredibly   outward directed or they hardly notice anything  except what they want more of one more more it's   very it's bad because those drugs trigger so much  dopamine release that they become the reward it's   very circular the only the drug can give that  much dopamine nothing they could pursue would   give them as much dopamine as the drug itself so  there's that and then there's the kind of opioid   like effects of constantly indulging oneself  with social media or with video games or with   with food or with anything to the point where  it no longer evokes the motivation and craving   and this is really the new evolution of the  understanding of dopamine in neuro in neuroscience   which is that dopamine itself is not the reward  it's the build up to the reward and the reward has   more of a kind of opioid bliss-like property which  itself is not bad if it's endogenous released from   within but when we can just sit there like  the like the rat with no dopamine gorging   ourselves with pleasures so to speak what you end  up with is somebody that feels really unmotivated   and those pleasures no longer work to tickle  those feel good circuits and so there's no   reason for them to go out and pursue anything  the problem is not pleasures the problem is that   pleasure experienced without prior requirement  for pursuit is terrible for us it's terrible   for us as individuals it's terrible for us as as  groups and i have great confidence in the human   species to work this out but we are finding  now and we are going to increasingly find   that those who will be successful young or old  are going to be those people who can create their   own internal buffers they're going to be able to  control their relationship to pleasures because   the proximity to pleasures and the availability  is the problem if you look at the increase in   use of drugs of abuse or prescription medication  which at least at the first past deliver pleasure   pain relief the whole issue with the opioid crisis  and dopaminergic drugs like ritalin adderall you   know there is sometimes there's a clinical need  but tons of people are taking those recreationally   now or to study huge dopamine increases are what  those cause that is a problem that's a serious   problem because it creates a cycle where you you  need more of that specific thing i always say   addiction is a progressive narrowing of the  things that bring you pleasure god that's   such a good difference and you know and i don't  like to comment too much on enlightenment because   you know i don't really know what that is as a  neurobiologist but a good life we could say is   a progressive expansion of the things that bring  you pleasure and even better is a good life is a   progressive expansion of the things that bring you  pleasure and includes pleasure through motivation   and hard work and understanding this pain pleasure  balance whereby if you experience pain and you can   continue to be in that friction and exert effort  the rewards are that much greater when they arrive   and so i think that if you look at any drug  of abuse or any situation where somebody   isn't motivated or thinks that now they may  have clinically diagnosed attention deficit   hyperactivity disorder but a lot of what people  think is adhd it turns out is people just over   consuming dopamine from various sources and then  and also the context within a tick-tock feed is   the context switch is insane the brain has never  seen first of all there's the first time in human   evolution that we wrote with our thumbs but that's  a pretty benign shift and that the other shift is   normally you walk from one room to another or from  a field into the trees or from a hut into or a   house or whatever it is but now you can get 10 000  context switches in that 30 minutes of scrolling   on instagram or to talk and so it's all about  self-regulation we are going to select for the   people that can self-regulate and so then people  say well how do you self-regulate how do kids   self-regulate well this is my hope and one of the  reasons i've gotten excited about public education   and teaching neuroscience is that this is a place  where knowledge of knowledge actually can allow   oneself to intervene when you think i'm feeling  low i don't feel good nothing really feels like   am i depressed maybe but maybe you're just you've  saturated the dopamine circuits you're now in the   pain part of things what do you do well you have  to stop you need you need to replenish dopamine   you need to stop engaging with this behavior  and then your pleasure for it will come back   but you have to constantly control the hinge it's  not just about being back and forth on the seesaw   you have to make sure the hinge doesn't get stuck  in pain or in pleasure understanding that pain   and pleasure in this really dynamic balance  can also help us which in the following way   any pain that you feel the longer day the less  sleep the the kind of agony that things aren't   working that power outlet doesn't work  or the internet is slow whatever it is   the amount of pleasure that you will eventually  experience is directly relation related excuse me   to how much pain you experience so we know this  from actually what nowadays would be considered   quite barbaric and unethical experiments  where they would give people electrical shocks   and they would measure their response and then  they'd say we're going to increase it we're   going to increase it eventually they get to the  point where a slight uh shock that was previously   very painful actually evokes a sense of pleasure  now you couldn't do these experiments anymore   these are not the experiments i do in my lab and  these are older experiments but for instance i   and this has been discussed in scientific research  papers uh giving somebody a like a ten minute ice   bath for instance or even a three-minute ice bath  or a one-minute ice bath it's quite painful but   there was a study from the university of prague  uh european journal physiology showed that   after a painful ice bath stimulus the amount of  dopamine release goes up for two and a half hours   to 250 percent above baseline and that's not  because the ice bath itself evokes dopamine   release a lot of people think oh cold water of ox  dopamine release no pain evokes dopamine release   after the pain is over just understanding the more  friction and pain that you experience the greater   the dopamine reward you will get later and that  serves as its own amplifier of the whole process   of pursuing more dopamine so the the keys are to  pursue rewards but understand that the pursuit   is actually the reward if you want to have  repeated wins then what you realize is your   capacity to tap into dopamine as a motivator not  just seeking dopamine rewards that is infinite you

Channel: After Skool

Views: 1,284,925

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Id: ha1ZbJIW1f8

Length: 11min 6sec (666 seconds)

Published: Tue May 24 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/MajestyDirtyBear]

5 weeks sober and it still feels like I haven’t reset my dopamine levels and I’m still demotivated to cook/exercise… guess it will come with time.

[u/[deleted]]

!

[u/MadCloudz]

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[u/LongjumpingJaguar0]

this is great. it makes so much sense. thanks for sharing this