BY DANIEL Z LIEBERMAN, MD, AND MICHAEL E LONG

Look down. What do you see?

Your hands, your desk, the floor—maybe a cup of coffee, a laptop computer, or a newspaper.

What you see when you look down are things within your reach—things you can control and manipulate without planning or effort. They’re things already in your possession.

Now look up. What do you see? The ceiling, perhaps pictures on a wall, or things out the window: trees, houses, buildings, clouds in the sky—whatever lies in the distance.

To reach them, you must plan and calculate. Unlike what we see when we look down, the realm of up shows us things we have to think about and work for to get.

To the brain, this distinction is the flying to the moon in a spaceship, or worshipping God beyond space and time, this chemical gives us command over distance—geographical or intellectual. gateway between two wildly different ways of thinking—two utterly different ways of dealing with the world.

In your brain the down world is managed by a handful of chemicals—neurotransmitters—that let you experience satisfaction, desire, and enjoy whatever you have in the here and now.

But when you turn your attention to the world of up, your brain relies on a different chemical—a single molecule—that not only allows you to move beyond what’s at your fingertips, but also motivates you to pursue and possess what lies beyond your immediate grasp.

It drives you to seek out those things you desire far away—knowledge, love, and power. Whether reaching across the table for the salt shaker,

Those down chemicals—call them the Here & Nows (H&Ns)—allow you to experience what’s in front of you. The up chemical is different. It makes you desire what you don’t yet have and drives you to seek new things. It is the source of creativity—and, further along the spectrum, madness. It is the key to addiction and the path to recovery.

It is the bit of biology that makes an ambitious executive sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, and that makes a satisfied husband or wife risk everything for the thrill of someone else. It is the itch that drives scientists to seek explanations and philosophers to search for order, reason, and meaning.

It is also why we are never happy for very long.

To your brain, this single molecule is the ultimate multipurpose device, urging us through neurochemical processes to move beyond the pleasure of simply being into exploring the universe of possibilities we can imagine. This is dopamine, and it narrates the story of human behavior.

And if you want to feel it right now—if you want to put it in charge—you can do that. Look up.

What Is More Powerful Than Pleasure?

Dopamine was discovered in the brain in 1957 by Kathleen Montagu, a researcher at Runwell Hospital near London.

Initially, it was seen as a way for the body to produce norepinephrine, the form of adrenaline found in the brain. But then scientists began to observe strange things. Only 0.0005 percent of brain cells produce dopamine—roughly one in two hundred thousand—yet these cells appeared to exert an outsized influence on behavior.

Research participants experienced feelings of pleasure when they turned dopamine on and went to great lengths to trigger the activation of these rare cells. Under the right circumstances, pursuing dopamine activation became impossible to resist. Some scientists christened dopamine the pleasure molecule, and the pathway that dopamine-producing cells take through the brain was named the reward circuit.

The reputation of dopamine as the pleasure molecule was further cemented through experiments with drug addicts. Researchers injected them with a combination of cocaine and radioactive sugar, which allowed them to see which parts of the brain were burning the most calories. As the intravenous cocaine took effect, participants were asked to rate how high they felt.

The greater the activity in the dopamine reward pathway, the greater the high. As the body cleared the cocaine from the brain, dopamine activity decreased, and the high faded.

Additional studies produced similar results, cementing dopamine’s reputation as the pleasure molecule.

Other researchers tried to duplicate the results, and that’s when unexpected things began to happen. They reasoned that it’s unlikely that dopamine pathways evolved to encourage people to get high on drugs. Drugs were probably causing an artificial form of dopamine stimulation. It seemed more likely that the evolutionary processes that harnessed dopamine were driven by the need to motivate survival and reproductive activity.

So they replaced cocaine with food, expecting to see the same effect.

What they found surprised everyone. It was the beginning of the end for dopamine as the pleasure molecule. Dopamine, they discovered, isn’t about pleasure at all. It delivers a feeling much more influential.

Understanding dopamine turns out to be the key to explaining and even predicting behavior across a spectacular range of human endeavors: creating art, literature, and music; seeking success; discovering new worlds and new laws of nature; thinking about God—and falling in love.

Monkeys, Rats, and Why Love Fades

To test whether both food and drugs stimulate dopamine, scientists implanted electrodes into rats’ brains to measure the activity of individual dopamine neurons. They built cages with chutes for food pellets. As soon as they dropped the first pellet, the rats’ dopamine systems lit up. Natural rewards stimulate dopamine activity just as well as cocaine and other drugs.

Next, they did something the original experimenters had not. They kept going, monitoring the rats’ brains as pellets of food were dropped down the chute, day after day. The results were wholly unexpected. The rats devoured the food as enthusiastically as ever, but their dopamine activity shut down. Why would dopamine stop firing when stimulation keeps coming? The answer came from an unlikely source: a monkey and a light bulb.

Wolfram Schultz is among the most influential pioneers of dopamine experimentation. As a professor of neurophysiology at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, he became interested in dopamine’s role in learning. He implanted tiny electrodes into the brains of macaque monkeys where dopamine cells clustered together and placed the monkeys in an apparatus that had two lights and two boxes.

Occasionally, one of the lights turned on. One light signaled that the food pellet could be found in the box on the right; the other meant the food pellet was in the box on the left.

It took the monkeys some time to figure out the rule; at first, they opened the boxes randomly and got it right about half the time. When they found a food pellet, the dopamine cells in their brains fired, just as in the rats. After a while, the monkeys figured out the signals and reached for the correct box every time—and the timing of dopamine release began to shift from firing upon discovery of the food to firing in response to the light.

Once the monkeys learned that the light meant food was coming, the “surprise” came exclusively from the appearance of the light, not from the food. From that, a new hypothesis arose: dopamine activity is not a marker of pleasure. It is a reaction to the unexpected—to possibility and anticipation.

Humans experience the same dopamine rush from similar surprises: the arrival of a sweet note from your lover (What will it say?) or, if you’re looking for romance, meeting a fascinating new partner at a sticky table in the same old bar (What might happen?). But when these things become regular events, their novelty fades, and so does the dopamine rush.

This simple idea provides a chemical explanation for an age-old question: Why does love fade? Our brains are programmed to crave the unexpected and thus to look to the future, where every exciting possibility begins. But when anything, including love, becomes familiar, that excitement slips away, and new things draw our attention.

Passion and desire rise when we dream of a world of possibility, and fade when we are confronted by reality. When the god or goddess of love beckoning you to the boudoir becomes a sleepy spouse blowing his or her nose into a ratty Kleenex, the nature of love—the reason to stay—must change from dopaminergic dreams to something else.

One Brain, Two Worlds

The brain manages the external world by dividing it into separate regions: the peripersonal and the extrapersonal—basically, near and far. Peripersonal space includes whatever is within arm’s reach, things you can control right now with your hands. This is the world of what’s real right now. Extrapersonal space refers to everything else—whatever you can’t touch unless you move beyond your reach. This is the realm of possibility.

Moving from one place to another takes time, so any interaction in extrapersonal space must occur in the future. If you’re in the mood for a peach but it’s at the corner market, you can’t enjoy it now; you can only enjoy it after you go get it. This is the defining feature of extrapersonal space: obtaining what lies there requires effort, time, and often planning. By contrast, anything in peripersonal space can be experienced in the here and now. We touch, taste, hold, and feel.

The brain works one way in the peripersonal space and another way in the extrapersonal space. If you were designing the human mind, it would make sense to distinguish between things you have and things you don’t. From an evolutionary standpoint, food you don’t have is critically different from food you do have. The division is so fundamental that separate pathways and chemicals evolved to handle these two realms.

When you look down, you look into the peripersonal space, governed by chemicals concerned with experience in the here and now. But when the brain engages with extrapersonal space, one chemical dominates: dopamine, the chemical of anticipation and possibility.

Things in the distance—things we don’t yet have—cannot be used or consumed, only desired. Dopamine’s job is to maximize resources that will be available to us in the future.

Love follows the same pattern. Falling in love is an extrapersonal experience—pursuit, possibility, anticipation. But lasting love must eventually shift into the peripersonal realm—from pursuit to possession, from imagining the future to caring for what we already have. These are very different skills, which is why, for many people, love fades when the dopamine thrill of romance ends.

The Dark Side

There’s a dark side to dopamine. If you drop a pellet of food into a rat’s cage, the animal experiences a dopamine surge. But if pellets arrive every five minutes, dopamine stops firing. The rat knows when to expect the food, so there’s no surprise—no error in its prediction of reward.

Picture the floor of a casino, where operators know the biggest profits don’t come from the high-roller games. They come from the slot machine, where players sit alone with flashing lights and ringing bells. Why? Because the rewards are unpredictable.

In an experiment by BF Skinner, pigeons were trained to peck a lever to release food. When the number of pecks required changed randomly, the birds never knew when the reward would come. They pecked faster and faster, driven by the anticipation of the next reward. Dopamine—the molecule of surprise—had been harnessed, laying the scientific foundation of the slot machine.

But novelty doesn’t last forever. When it comes to love, the thrill of passionate romance eventually fades. We can shift toward a love rooted in everyday experience, or chase another roller coaster of anticipation.

Choosing the dopaminergic thrill takes little effort, but it ends quickly. Love that lasts shifts from anticipation to experience—from the fantasy of possibility to engagement with reality and all its imperfections. That transition is difficult, which is why, when the dopamine rush of early romance fades, many relationships end as well.

The Chemical Keys to Long-Lasting Love

From dopamine’s point of view, having things is uninteresting. It’s only getting things that matters. If you live under a bridge, dopamine makes you want a tent. If you live in the most expensive mansion in the world, dopamine makes you want a castle on the moon. Dopamine has no standard for good and seeks no finish line. Its motto is simple: More.

Dopamine is one of the instigators of love, the spark that sets everything in motion. But for love to continue, the relationship must change, because the chemistry behind it changes. Dopamine isn’t the pleasure molecule— it’s the anticipation molecule. To enjoy what we have, our brains must transition from future-oriented dopamine to a group of present-oriented chemicals. Remember, we call them the Here & Now molecules, or H&Ns.

These include serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins, and endocannabinoids—chemicals that produce pleasure through sensation and emotion.

Passionate love typically lasts only twelve to eighteen months. After that, couples must develop a different kind of attachment called companionate love. Companionate love is mediated by the H&Ns because it involves experiences happening right here and right now—you’re with the person you love, so enjoy it.

When the H&Ns take over in this second stage of love, dopamine is suppressed. Dopamine fuels dissatisfaction with the present so we will pursue a better future—exactly what drives the excitement of a new relationship. Companionate love, by contrast, is built on satisfaction with what already exists. Dopamine and H&N circuits can work together, but they also counteract one another. When H&N circuits dominate, we experience the real world around us; when dopamine dominates, we move into a future of possibilities.

A romance built on dopamine is thrilling, but short-lived. The chemicals most associated with long-term attachment are oxytocin and vasopressin, which help sustain deep bonds between partners.

When we fall in love, we imagine a future made perfect by the presence of our beloved. Eventually, that imagined future collides with reality. In many cases, the relationship ends; in others, it evolves into something more durable: companionate love. It may not produce the intoxicating excitement of early romance, but it can deliver something far more valuable—longterm happiness.

Dopamine may start us down the road to love—revving our desires and illuminating our imagination—but it cannot sustain us there. Dopamine can only say one thing: more.

Hijacking the Desire Circuit

Like a guided missile, addictive drugs hit the desire circuit with an intense chemical blast. No natural behavior can match that—not food, not sex.

Alan Leshner, the former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said that drugs “hijack” the desire circuit. They stimulate it far more intensely than natural rewards like food or sex, which engage the same motivational system in the brain. Circuits that evolved to keep us alive are taken over by an addictive chemical and repurposed to enslave the addict who gets caught in its net.

Drug abuse is like cancer: it starts small but can quickly take over every aspect of a user’s life. An alcoholic may begin with a few drinks on the weekend, but gradually other priorities disappear—family activities, responsibilities, and eventually work.

To an addict, drugs are more important. That guided-missile dopamine blast overwhelms everything else. If making decisions is like weighing options on a balance, an addictive drug is an elephant sitting on one side of the scale. Nothing else can compete.

Drugs are fundamentally different from natural dopamine triggers. When we’re starving, getting food is powerfully motivating. But once we eat, satiety circuits shut down the desire circuit. With drugs, that shutdown never comes. Addicts take drugs until they pass out, get sick, or run out of money. If you ask an addict how much he wants, there is only one answer: more.

The dopamine system normally helps us learn from unexpected rewards. Circuits bathed in dopamine become malleable. New memories form. New connections are established.

“Remember what happened,” says the dopamine desire circuit. “This may be useful in the future.”

Addictive drugs bypass this process and artificially ignite the dopamine system. In doing so, they scramble everything up. All that remains is a gnawing desire and craving for more.

Drugs destroy the delicate balance the brain requires to function normally. Dopamine begins firing regardless of the situation, and the brain connects drug use to everything—celebration, sadness, boredom, stress, relaxation. That is why twelve-step programs warn addicts about the triggers that can lead to relapse: people, places, and things.

Dopamine Versus Dopamine

It’s natural to confuse wanting and liking. Frequently, we want things we don’t like. Our desires can lead us toward things that may destroy our lives, such as drugs, gambling, and other out-of-control behaviors.

The dopamine desire circuit is powerful. It focuses attention, motivates, and thrills. Yet it isn’t all-powerful.

Addicts get clean. Dieters lose weight. Sometimes we switch off the TV, get off the couch, and go for a run. What kind of circuit in the brain is powerful enough to oppose dopamine? Dopamine itself. The circuit that opposes the desire circuit might be called the dopamine control circuit.

Future-focused dopamine often opposes the activity of the H&N circuits and vice versa. If you’re thinking about where to go for dinner, you’re probably not appreciating the taste, smell, and texture of the sandwich you’re eating for lunch. But there is also opposition within the future-oriented dopamine system itself.

Why would the brain develop circuits that work against each other? Wouldn’t it make more sense for everyone to pull together? In fact, no. Systems with opposing forces are easier to control. That’s why cars have both an accelerator and a brake—and why the brain uses circuits that counter each other.

Not surprisingly, the dopamine control circuit involves the frontal lobes—the part of the brain sometimes called the neocortex, because it evolved most recently. It allows us to project ourselves further into the future than the desire circuit can take us, so we can make long-term plans. It also enables us to maximize future resources by creating tools and using abstract concepts such as language, mathematics, and science.

It’s intensely rational. It doesn’t feel, because emotion is an H&N phenomenon.

Planning and Calculation

Just wanting rarely gets you much of anything. You have to figure out how to obtain it and whether it is worth having at all.

Dopamine makes us want things. It is the source of raw desire: Give me more. But we are not completely at the mercy of that desire. We also have a complementary dopamine circuit that calculates what sort of more is worth having. It allows us to construct plans—to strategize and dominate the world around us to get the things we want.

How does a single chemical do both things? Think of rocket fuel that powers the engines of a spaceship. In a similar way, dopamine moving through different brain circuits yields different functions.

Urges come from dopamine passing through the mesolimbic circuit— known as the dopamine desire circuit. Calculation and planning come from the mesocortical circuit—often called the dopamine control circuit.

The control circuit allows us to peer into the future, see the consequences of decisions we might make right now, and plan how to make an imagined future a reality. The two circuits begin in the same place, but they end in different parts of the brain. The desire circuit terminates in regions that generate excitement and enthusiasm, while the control circuit extends to the frontal lobes, which specialize in logical thinking.

Desire dopamine is the kid in the back seat shouting “Look! Look!” every time he sees something exciting.

Control dopamine is the parent at the wheel, hearing the request and deciding whether it is worth stopping.

Figuring things out—planning, strategizing, and mastering situations—can be rewarding in its own way.

The Delicate Balance Between Dopamine and the H&Ns

Dopamine and the H&N neurotransmitters evolved to work together. They often act in opposition to one another, helping maintain balance in the brain. The modern world pushes us toward being all dopamine, all the time. Too much dopamine can lead to productive misery, while too much H&N can lead to happy indolence: the workaholic executive versus the pot-smoking basement dweller. Neither one is living a truly happy life or growing as a person. To live well, we need to bring them back into balance.

How can the ordinary person find that balance? We have to find it without abandoning the modern world. Dopamine alone will never satisfy us. It can’t provide satisfaction any more than a hammer can turn a screw. Yet it constantly promises that satisfaction is just around the corner: one more donut, one more promotion, one more conquest. How do we get off the treadmill? It’s not easy, but there are ways.

The High Cost of Living in the Future

Living our lives in the abstract, unreal, dopaminergic world of future possibilities comes at a cost, and that cost is happiness. Researchers from Harvard University explored this by developing a smartphone app that prompted volunteers to provide real-time reports of their thoughts, feelings, and actions as they went about their daily activities. The goal of the study was to learn more about the relationship between a wandering mind and happiness.

They found that people were less happy when their minds wandered, and it didn’t matter what the activity was. Whether they were eating, working, watching TV, or socializing, people were happier when they were paying attention to what they were doing.

The researchers concluded that “a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”

By spending time in the present, we take in sensory information about the reality we live in, allowing the dopamine system to use that information to develop reward-maximizing plans.

The impressions we absorb can inspire new ideas and enhance our ability to solve problems. Creating something new—something that has never been conceived before—is, by definition, surprising. Because it is always new, creation is one of the most durable dopaminergic pleasures.

___________________________________________

Daniel Z Lieberman, MD, is a clinical professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University and senior vice president of mental health at Hims & Hers Health. He has advised the US Department of Health and Human Services, the US Department of Commerce, and the Office of Drug and Alcohol Policy, and has discussed mental health on CNN, C-SPAN, and PBS. Dr. Lieberman studied the Great Books at St. John’s College and earned his medical degree at New York University, where he also completed his psychiatric training.

Michael E Long, trained as a physicist, is an award-winning speechwriter, screenwriter, and playwright. As a speechwriter, he has written for members of Congress, US cabinet secretaries, governors, diplomats, business executives, and presidential candidates. A frequent speaker and educator, he has addressed audiences worldwide, including delivering a keynote at Oxford University. He teaches writing at Georgetown University, where he previously served as director of writing. Long studied at Murray State University and Vanderbilt University.

Well Being Journal adapted the above excerpt from The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race by Daniel Z Lieberman, MD, and Michael E Long. Copyright © 2018 by Daniel Z Lieberman, MD, and Michael E Long. Printed with permission from BenBella Books, Inc.