Are we addicted to talking about dopamine? In this episode, we tackle dopamine hype with real science: what dopamine is doing in the brain, how we study it, and how it's been misunderstood.

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SHOW NOTES

two articles tackling dopamine nation:

• https://awjuliani.medium.com/beyond-dopamine-nation-towards-a-fuller-picture-of-addiction-and-recovery-97b37e17235e
• https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/opinion/addiction-dopamine-brain-chemistry.html?unlocked_article_code=1.yVA.uvbi.PVfFQMzMudvb&smid=url-share

other great takes on this topic:

• mark humphries "the crimes against dopamine" https://medium.com/the-spike/the-crimes-against-dopamine-b82b082d5f3d
• https://youtu.be/HZRGWPLeMIg?si=Ponb7AagEa4QN2BY

things that cause dopamine release, as studied with PET:

• video games https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9607763/
• music https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.2726
• yes, cocaine https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9331351/ (relatedly, nora volkow's work: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18617195/)
• not just reward in isolation https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811922009521

more papers that fueled the sciency talk here:

• https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.neuro.28.061604.135722
• https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1513619112
• https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1014269108
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32974872/

songs covered in the episode:

• "dopamine" by robyn https://youtu.be/vitil9qMN6A?si=mMu1FliQP4-6QSIE
• "dopamine" by madelline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Upy4rB8V3T4

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Learn more about Ashley:

• https://ashleyjuavinett.com/
• https://mastodon.social/@analog_ashley
• ashleyjuavinett.bsky.social

Learn more about Cat:

• https://www.drcathicks.com/
• https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina
• grimalkina.bsky.social

You can find the talk Cat gave about learning and its citations here: https://github.com/DrCatHicks/tailscale_talk

On beliefs about humans being more genetically dissimilar than they are, work primarily done by Brian Donovan: Donovan et al. (2024). "Humane genomics education can reduce racism." Science, 383(6685), 818–822. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi7895

Learn more about Ashley:

• https://ashleyjuavinett.com/
• https://mastodon.social/@analog_ashley
• ashleyjuavinett.bsky.social

Learn more about Cat:

• https://www.drcathicks.com/
• https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina
• grimalkina.bsky.social

📚 PREVIEW CAT'S BOOK, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOFTWARE TEAMS! Pre-orders will be available in June.

https://www.routledge.com/The-Psychology-of-Software-Teams/Hicks/p/book/9781032963389

📝 EPISODE NOTES

• Jeff Shreve's Substack that Ashley mentions in the beginning https://jeffshreve.substack.com/
• Ashley is not linking anything about the reiki on rats paper here because she doesn't want that paper to get more hits than warranted but she *does* you to see the figure from it and has put it here for your viewing: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WQGGjh2VT87XbbmaqdK2g7tyyknzwr6s/view?usp=sharing
• Cat read a couple of papers about creativity for this episode, including: Inspired by Distraction: Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation and Innovation Relies on the Obscure: A Key to Overcoming the Classic Problem of Functional Fixedness

Learn more about Ashley:

• https://ashleyjuavinett.com/
• https://mastodon.social/@analog_ashley
• ashleyjuavinett.bsky.social

Learn more about Cat:

• https://www.drcathicks.com/
• https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina
• grimalkina.bsky.social