The Science of Craving

http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/features/wanting-versus-liking

by sergeant3 • 11 years ago

20 2 11 years ago

spudlyo• 11 years ago

Fascinating article, thanks for sharing. I'm working hard to try to get my dopamine based desires under control, I hadn't seriously considered meditation as a tool until now.

dmarble• 11 years ago

A couple summary quotes:

"[W]hen [Dr. Kent] Berridge, a dedicated young scientist who was more David than Goliath, stumbled upon evidence in 1986 that dopamine did not produce pleasure, but in fact desire, he kept quiet. It wasn't until the early 1990s, after rigorous research, that he felt bold enough to go public with his new thesis. The reward system, he then asserted, has two distinct elements: wanting and liking (or desire and pleasure). While dopamine makes us want, the liking part comes from opioids and also endocannabinoids (a version of marijuana produced in the brain), which paint a 'gloss of pleasure', as Berridge puts it, on good experiences. For years, his thesis was contested, and only now is it gaining mainstream acceptance.

. . . .

"'It's easy to turn on intense wanting,' he says, when we eventually sit down. 'Massive, robust systems do it. They can come on with the pleasure, they can come on without the pleasure, they don't care. It's tricky to turn on the pleasure.' He hadn't expected his findings to turn out this way, but it made sense. 'This may explain', he later tells his audience, 'why life's intense pleasures are less frequent and less sustained than intense desires.'"

== On mindfulness meditation: ==

"It's not that meditation makes the wanting go away. 'What it is doing', Berridge says, 'is giving the more cognitive mind a way of distancing itself from the urgency of those wants. It's a practised mental gymnastic. A want occurs, but because you're so practised, you can recognise that want, appraise it, feel it all around, focus on that, and the feeling of urgency as a feeling, without engaging in it.'"

== On controlling our desire/pleasure systems: ==

"The strength of dopamine/wanting in an addict's brain is so fierce that it is hard to conquer. ... Walter Mischel's famous marshmallow tests told children that they could forgo one marshmallow for the promise of two if they waited a while. Mischel tracked the children in later life and found a link between self-control and success. The controlled kids had resisted the marshmallow by simply making a decision and moving on without further discussion. They turned away from it, or tugged their pigtails to distract themselves from allowing it to arouse their senses. The children who deliberated, or lingered over the marshmallow, were more likely to cave in. 'It looks as though the best way of resisting is not to open the question[.]'"

The Science of Craving

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