Category: Podcasts

The episodes – particularly the 2nd – helped me achieve some breakthroughs around motivation and understanding addiction, so I went back to take these notes

Added double asterisks (**) to points I particularly wanted to remember

Mistakes all mine

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“Controlling dopamine for motivation, focus, and satisfaction”

Cold water submersion —> rise up to 250% increase in dopamine, sustained afterwards

There’s baseline level of dopamine
There are variations – called tonic (below baseline)) / phasic (above baseline)
**After peak (phasic), there is a trough (tonic), baseline level drops

Dopamine is primary determinant of how motivated, excited we are, pursue things

Parkinson’s – depletion / death of dopamine neurons which affects movement

Two dopamine circuits in brain
-mesocortico limbic pathway – one pathway really gets disrupted in drug addictions like coke, meth
-substantia nigra

Dopamine release can be very local or broad
Synaptic and Volumetric release

Pleasure / joy = dopamine peak relative to baseline, not just peak absolute

Neurons communicate in 2 modes:
1. Fast electronic synapses, sodium ions
2. Slow receptors (dopamine) – effects take awhile to occur

**Dopamine is really stimulating – sympathetic arousal – increases level of alertness, look outside and pursue things outside yourself

“Universal currency” in all mammals for moving us towards goals
It’s “how you track” pleasure and success

**When you do something you repeatedly enjoy, threshold for enjoyment goes up and up

Got giardia, went to hospital, was given thorazine which blocked his dopamine receptors – felt overwhelming sadness, most he’s ever felt, was a horrible experience

Everyone has baseline levels of dopamine

Epinephrine – wakes up neural circuits, gives us readiness, “energy” molecule
Dopamine and epinephrine (adrenaline) are closely related

What increases dopamine?
-chocolate – 1.5x – transient (few seconds to minutes)
-sex – pursuit and act – 2x
-nicotine (especially smoked) – 2.5x – but very short lived
-cocaine – 2.5x
-meth – 10x
-exercise – depends on perceived enjoyment – from 1-2x
-caffeine – only increases a little bit, but increases receptors uptake – more able to experience dopamine’s effects

**Dopamine is actually LOWERED if you hate doing X, but force yourself to do it afterward in anticipation of reward – it makes the “doing” worse

Alcohol + smoking
Caffeine + smoking
Can synergies and give bigger dopamine increases, but can cause troughs

“Universal currency of foraging and seeking”

The higher the peak, the lower the trough later (eg, 1-2 days)

Pleasure / pain balance
Pain comes from lack of dopamine – when the readily releasable pool gets depleted

Addiction = baseline gets lower over time, gets progressively less pleasure over time (eg, video game addiction, drug addiction)

Work hard / play hard can lead to burnout, because both the work and play are both spiking dopamine – it’s just one currency for motivation + pleasure

To replenish the dopamine POOL, stop engaging in those behaviors (!) – eg, 30d of no video games

If you layer on things to try to get max dopamine – eg, gym + fave music + coffee = makes it hard to get the same dopamine in future
**Remove multiple sources of dopamine release from activities that you like / want to enjoy
Eg, stimulants + studying, fave music + gym, phone + anything

Make sure high peaks don’t occur too often
eg, intermittent rewards

Phone can bring you out of context / focus – and is a source of constant little dopamine hits
eg, Huberman doesn’t allow phone into workouts

**Caffeine is bit of an exception since it increases density / effectiveness of dopamine receptors
Yerba mate is particularly good

Cocaine / amphetamine reduces ability to learn (in addition to lowering baseline dopamine) afterwards for a period of time

How do we increase / sustain baseline dopamine?
-**cold exposure (eg, Wim Hof) – dopamine can reach 2.5x baseline (comparable to cocaine) – not a rise and crash but a sustained rise for 2-3 hours after
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**If children intrinsically enjoy drawing, but we add a reward to it, then a lot of kids will actually draw less once the reward is tied to it (vs intrinsic motivation)

David Goggins is great example – turning effort into the reward

**“Ability to access pleasure from effort” – most beautiful thing about dopamine

“Learn to spike dopamine from effort itself”

Cultivating growth mindset = learning to access rewards from effort and doing itself
Find dopamine from friction and challenge you’re currently in

“The effort part is the good part”

Intermittent fasting is a good example
When we eat, we get dopamine release – especially when we’re hungry
Perception of dopamine is heightened when you haven’t seen much of it – eg, not eating for a long time

Dopamine isn’t just attached to primitive behaviors, but also to prefrontal cortex and other higher activities

If we hear something that validates a belief we have, can increase dopamine (!)

Big dopamine release = harder for future big dopamine release

Porn – big dopamine release – can lead to challenges

Macuna pruriens – OTC, is a precursor to dopamine, can lead to large surge in dopamine, increases sperm concentration + quality

L-Tyrosine – potent stimulus for increasing dopamine

Dopamine conditions / disfunction can occur when taking certain dopamine medications – and can also be innate eg, anxiety, schizophrenia

**Huberman not fan of melatonin for enhancing sleep – also Matt Walker – only for jet lag
Decreases dopamine 60m after melatonin

Phenylethylamine (PEA) – chocolate enriched in it – increases synaptic levels of dopamine
Huberman takes supplements
Sharp transient increase that lasts 30-45m

**Oxytocin and social connection and pair bonding triggers dopamine release

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“Leverage Dopamine to Overcome Procrastination & Optimize Effort”

Dopamine is neuromodulator

Brain circuits
-Substantia nigra – contains neurons that are full of dopamine
-Mesolimbic pathway
-Mesocortical pathway
-several other pathways but I didn’t take notes

Prefrontal cortex – behind forehead – much larger in humans
Involved in long term planning, understanding context, making decisions
“Area of brain that says ‘shhh’ or ‘no, not now’”

**Eyes are part of brain, got extruded during development (!)

Addiction = progressive narrowing of things that bring us pleasure

Dopamine peaks & troughs
**Analogy of the “wave pool” – Dr. Kyle Gillett
Large waves – many peaks – water can slosh out, baseline drops

Say you’re hungry and thinking about food
Dopamine starts rising in anticipation
Relates to our propensity / desire to move (dopamine helps motivate it)
Eat sandwich – if it’s good – dopamine has another peak

“Reward prediction error” – dopamine released is relative to what you expected to get
Higher the expectation, lower the reality = less dopamine

Craving:
1. Desire for something (eg, a delicious sandwich)
4. 4. 4. Desire to relieve pain of not having that thing

Most findings came in the last 5 years

As we strive for something, always looking for cues if we’re on the right path
Why some people are so motivated, but others are the opposite
Why is goal seeking so context dependent?
All these cues adjust your baseline dopamine constantly – “reward prediction error”

Dopamine is propeller driving us in direction we wish to pursue

The system basically learns from everything you do, to better understand and adjust and influence how and what you pursue in the future

2 alcoholic drinks a week is fine, after that starts to create problems
But 0 is better

**Duration between desire and effect matters – if very short gap, then system expects that in future (eg, cocaine instantly boosts dopamine)

**Higher the peak, and faster the rise to peak, the further the fall below baseline

Drop below baseline triggers desire for more, starts vicious loop especially for easy dopamine hits (eg, drugs)

**Subsequent hits = lower peaks, and deeper troughs below baseline

Cocaine = 10x (1000%)
Meth = 10-100x
Sex = 4-5x (but some individuals double)
Coffee = 2x

Reset of addiction = 30 days of abstinence = dopamine trough makes you feel bad (among other things)

“Binding behaviors” (reminds me of Anna Lembke) – self-limits / setting boundaries – space & time
Binding engages pre-frontal cortex

We need enough water in the wave pool – a healthy baseline of dopamine
-sufficient sleep – restores dopamine reserves
-non sleep deep rest – not meditation (which is a focusing exercise, not a “rest”) – but yoga nidra (relaxation, guided meditation)
-nutrition (tyrosine levels) – cheese, nuts, meats
-morning sunlight (!!)
-regular movement – circuits that generate movement interact with dopamine generating circuits

Some people have gene adaptations for higher dopamine, lower activation energy – that “go” drive

Increase in baseline = any dopamine increase > 1hr

Cold water = 3-5 hours sustained dopamine increase
Or warm water (eg, 60F) for up to 1 hour (!)

Compounds to increase dopamine
-Macuna purins – increases peak, kinda spike-y
-L-tyrosine – can increase baseline dopamine, cognitive improvements
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Postpartum depression – concept can apply to peak dopamine experiences
Important to remember
-that baseline takes several days to replenish
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Holy grail of motivation:
-Stanford study – observing kids with free time, kids chose to draw pictures, experimenters introduced rewards to those kids, this increases dopamine, but once rewards were removed, the kids spent less time drawing (!) – repeated in variety of contexts and cultures – bigger peak, then bigger trough, but eventually it can reset to normal
-if you enjoy an activity a lot, guard and protect it – don’t layer and add rewards to create a higher peak, because it can lead to bigger trough later

He fell into habit of creating excess peaks in the activities he enjoyed doing (eg, running, or science lab experiments) by stacking supplements, caffeine, etc – but increasingly it led to troughs / burnout

Better to hold onto intrinsic motivation / pleasure of doing an activity and not stacking other things to seek more peaks

MAKE EFFORT THE REWARD

Reward-prediction error – difference between our desire / expected outcome, and the actual received outcome – the higher the positive gap, the more motivation we have in the future, and vice-versa

“Growth mindset” is important – it’s not “you’re not good at X”, it’s “you’re not good at X YET”

Dopamine trough is experienced as craving, wanting, pain

**If deep trough – best way is sharp accelerated rate to get out – WAIT will take too long – to rebound faster, do something more painful / harder than waiting (eg, cold shower, go for a workout, clean the house)

“What would be worse than this state?” – something that really sucks and yet is safe
This steepens the trough, so then you bounce back faster

Does meditation increase dopamine?
If it’s effortful, it can increase dopamine

Not about achieving outcome, but rather forcing yourself into a deeper state of discomfort