I just took a quick look through this, but it looks quite useful. I got interested in dopamine some years ago when I was working on a book on music. I was able to quickly dismiss the idea that dopamine is a pleasure drug and even that there are pleasure centers in the brain. In this I was advised by the late Walter Freeman, at Berkeley. I ended up concocting a somewhat different account of pleasure for that book: https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2022/06/what-is-musical-pleasure.html
Awesome stuff! All of us folks digging into things like Dopamine must also consider the need to bring evolution deeper into the conversation. Biology has been solving complex issues way way way before brains ever existed, yet dopamine was critical to survival via motivation, agency, reward etc. Looking into stuff like Levy walks and dopamine shows that this stuff goes back 700+ millions years! Pretty awesome that we've just taken the first couple steps in whats sure to be an ultramarathon of epic proportions.
Great job covering this. I’m a bit out of the dopamine literature at this point but have heard Kent Berridge give a number of excellent talks over the years. He is one of the most humble people and his work has been groundbreaking. Thanks for a comprehensive update on his and others’ subsequent work.
Exactly. My point is habitual tension in the shoulders cutting off the motor impulses of normal bodily functions. Dopamine relaxes but does not overcome the habit.
I just took a quick look through this, but it looks quite useful. I got interested in dopamine some years ago when I was working on a book on music. I was able to quickly dismiss the idea that dopamine is a pleasure drug and even that there are pleasure centers in the brain. In this I was advised by the late Walter Freeman, at Berkeley. I ended up concocting a somewhat different account of pleasure for that book: https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2022/06/what-is-musical-pleasure.html
I'm going to read this off-line. Thanks.
Awesome stuff! All of us folks digging into things like Dopamine must also consider the need to bring evolution deeper into the conversation. Biology has been solving complex issues way way way before brains ever existed, yet dopamine was critical to survival via motivation, agency, reward etc. Looking into stuff like Levy walks and dopamine shows that this stuff goes back 700+ millions years! Pretty awesome that we've just taken the first couple steps in whats sure to be an ultramarathon of epic proportions.
Great job covering this. I’m a bit out of the dopamine literature at this point but have heard Kent Berridge give a number of excellent talks over the years. He is one of the most humble people and his work has been groundbreaking. Thanks for a comprehensive update on his and others’ subsequent work.
Exactly. My point is habitual tension in the shoulders cutting off the motor impulses of normal bodily functions. Dopamine relaxes but does not overcome the habit.
Dopamine is beside the point. I treats the symptom, not the cause of the symptom. It's beside the point.