#1

In the first chapters, you learn about the influence of neurotransmitters on your behavior. It seems that your actions, attention, and mental states are a reflection of the different neurotransmitters levels and their ratio. Based on this understanding – to what extent are you responsible for your behavior? How much free will do you have and to what degree are you "chemically enslaved"?

‍

#2

Think about the dopamine system from the pre-historic perspective – where the aim is maximizing the resources that will be available to us in the future; the pursuit of better things that you can't even grasp at the moment with your senses; the need to motivate survival, reproductive activity, and dominance of one's environment (and people in it). 

Is this evolutionarily shaped dopamine system setup adapted for the modern world you live in today? Or is it in some ways inappropriately "tuned"? If you could reconfigure your brain (dopamine system specifically), what changes would you suggest?

‍

#1

At the beginning of the chapter devoted to creativity, you learned about the concept of salience. Salience is the extent to which things appear important, unusual, or conspicuous to us. Things "stand out" when they have the potential to affect your life and future, whether for better or worse. Our nervous system responds to them by activating the dopamine mesolimbic circuit – which will send you a message – wake up and pay attention! 

To know about the mechanisms behind salience is critical for several reasons. The extent to which our brain responds to stimuli in our environment directly affects our ability to concentrate, perceive and evaluate information, make decisions, and regulate our emotional stress.

On the one hand, things that are irrelevant to you are set up in a way to draw your attention (like ads). On the other hand, once something becomes familiar, or our system decides it is no longer significant, we suppress our ability to notice it. We become blind to it and take it for granted.

How can you apply this knowledge in practice?

How do programmers/marketers use this mechanism against you?

‍

#2

As the authors stated in the introduction, the dopamine system is not a unique human feature. What separates us from other animals is the amount of dopamine in our brain, which created a platform for abstract thinking – and allowed us to conceive a world beyond our senses.

Because the world is infinitely complex and the amount of data would overwhelm us, we use abstract thinking to create mental models—imaginary representations (maps) of the world. Those allow us to make the reality easier to grasp and orient ourselves in it. The model creation is not a conscious process. The brain creates models automatically and updates them as we learn new things. Besides simplifying our conception of the world, models also allow us to abstract – to take specific experiences and use them to create generally applicable rules. Thus, we can anticipate and solve situations we have never encountered before.

But the model is not a reality, and if we mistake it for one, it can have immense practical consequences. 

The problem is – the models only contain those elements of the environment that their creator considers essential, often influenced by the culture and environment in which we grew up. Other details are filtered out. Although this makes the world more manageable to understand and later enables us to imagine various ways to manipulate it to our benefit – it necessarily affects our decisions and creates distorted opinions. All because we do not respect the limitations of our models. 

Are you aware of your own created mental models, based on which you view the world and all things in it?Try to write some of your models down and assign the influences that shaped them, their limitations, and the consequences that stem from them.

To sum up – how well our models fit the real world is of great importance.

‍

#3

When we are creative, we stop suppressing aspects of reality that we have previously written off as unimportant and attribute prominence to things we once considered irrelevant. In other words, you can see and make connections between things that would usually stay hidden from you. Lieberman & Long speak of the creative mind as the most powerful force on Earth.

Can you get into a state of creativity on command? What tools/tactics do you use for this purpose? Does everyone have the potential to be creative, or is it the privilege of only a small part of the population?

‍

#4

The authors point to the existing link between the 7R allele (D4 gene for the dopamine receptor) and relating to a liberal ideology – but only if one grew up around people with different political views. That means that for a given effect to occur, there must be both a genetic and a social impact. 

How do you think about human qualities in the context of genetic heredity and environmental influences? To what extent do you think that individual traits, whether physical or mental, are genetically determined? To what extent are they formable by the environment?

‍

#1

In the chapter 6 introduction, the authors point out the advantages of a dopaminergic nature in the migration and exploration of an unexplored new environment. This particular example also reflects a broader connection to the fundamental difference between how the human brain works in a known and unknown environment.

The "domain of the known" and the "domain of the unknown" can be considered as permanent fundemental constituents of the human experience, as well as of the human environment. The human brain has adapted to the archetype of the eternal presence of these two places. The brain has one mode of operation in the explored area and the other in the unexplored area.

How does your behavior change when you find yourself in either explored or unexplored environment? What emotions are characteristic of those two domains?

What role do your previous night's sleep quality, stress levels, time of day play in this? Can you think of other variables that affect your behavior/emotions in familiar vs. unfamiliar place/situation?

‍

#2

"The change does not stress everyone equally. A new job, a new city, even a whole new career can be exciting and energizing for people with dopaminergic personalities. They thrive in unfamiliar environments."

Being ideally placed on the spectrum of dopaminergic personality depends on your genetic makeup. But what if you have not won the genetic lottery? Can you change your personality or your settings to perceive the stress of novelty differently? What specific strategies could you employ to address this issue?

‍

#3

"Specialists in affective disorders in bipolar disorder do not distinguish whether or not someone has it, but where the person is on the bipolar spectrum." – very interesting, although at first sight a perhaps insignificant fact.

The current genetic research shows us that medical models are flawed when it comes to psychological problems. What we call disorders are just the extremes of the same genes that are present in the normal distribution. That means that there are no genes "for" psychological disorders. Instead, we all have a lot of DNA differences related to these disorders. The main question is how many we have. The genetic spectrum ranges from a few differences to thousands, and the more we have, the more likely we are to have problems.

The genetic causes of what we call disorders differ in the population quantitatively, not qualitatively. It is a question of more/less (quantity), not either/or (quality).

What implications can you deduce from this recent discovery?

‍

#4

The way we move is part of what defines us. People around us often notice that we are not ourselves in the way we hold our body, in our posture, in the way we move. The aspects of our behavior and appearance that are outside of our conscious control appear different. Together – our body reflects our inner state and changes of various natures. 

Looking at this notion from the opposite direction – can we change our inner state through targeted bodywork – movement, taking shape, position? Can we affect our nervous, immune, and other systems in this style, both acutely and for a long time?

‍

#5

How do you identify with the presented solutions for achieving the balance between dopamine and H&N neurotransmitter systems, proposed by the authors in the last chapter?

‍

- a technique derived from Richard Feynman, who excelled in his ability to synthesize and explain even complex scientific concepts. By using this technique right after you have finished the book, you will further enhance your understanding of the book's subject, identify the possible gaps in your knowledge and master the ability to clearly communicate the newly acquired information.

It consists of the following steps:

‍

01. Teach it to a child

Take out a blank sheet of paper and write the central concept of the book you have just finished in the top corner. Underneath, write down everything you know about this concept, without revisiting your notes or the book. The trick is, however, that you have to write in style, as if you wanted to teach a given concept to a 12-year-old child. Unlike your intelligent adult friends, 12-year-olds do not have scientific / technical terminology and specific jargon. Plus, they do not hold attention for too long. Therefore, you need to be clear and concise, and use language, which vocabulary can be easily understood by a child, so it can grasp the basic ideas and relationships.

‍

02. Identify your knowledge gaps

As you write, you will get to points where you will not be able to explain something in simple words, you will not be able to recall some key information, or you will have trouble tying the individual parts together to make clear connection.

In other words, you will encounter gaps in your knowledge... and that is the point, where you are really starting to learn!

Now that you know where you got stuck, go back and re-read particular passages in the book, review your own notes, or look for other source materials that address this concept. This process is necessary for you to fill in all the cracks that emerged from the previous step, and skipping it leads to the illusion of your knowledge.

‍

03. Organize, simplify and tell a story

At this point, you have a set of manually created notes in front of you. Go through them and create one continuous story, which will contain the key terms, relationships, and ideas of the concept you have just studied.

Practice reading the created story aloud. Pretend you're telling a story to a class of younger students. This way you will hear where your speech ceases to be simple and concise - avoid jargon and complicated sentences. Stumbles in the speech will again indicate to you the incompleteness of your thoughts. Practice until you are satisfied with the simplicity, straightforwardness, and fluency of your presentation. Ideally, invite live listeners who will give you feedback.