7 ms·

Interesting stuff but I wonder about the veracity of claiming that “every email you receive releases a hit of dopamine”. For one thing I thought the chemical m

Interesting stuff but I wonder about the veracity of claiming that “every email you receive releases a hit of dopamine”. For one thing I thought the chemical models of the brain we have are far too primitive to know this. Secondly does this mean I can get high from reading emails? It’s not working.

thrower123 7y ago
I think I get the opposite reaction from receiving an email. It's definitely more on the "Oh hell, what now?" end of the spectrum most of the time.
- jonhendry18 7y ago
  I think "email" is probably meant to represent anything of that ilk: emails, tweets, text messages, Reddit posts, blog posts, etc.
majos 7y ago
Some variant of this sentence seems to be in every article about how tech is dangerous. Deliberate and effective manipulation of addictive behavior is a real thing tech companies do, but IMO this "dopamine hit" language is so popular because 1. the word dopamine is sciencey and sounds good, plus it has "dope" in there, like the actual drug, and 2. the word hit also reminds people of hard drugs.
- jerf 7y ago
  It reminds me of the continual stream of articles breathlessly proclaiming that some activity "rewires your brain!", like this is automatically some bad thing. But your brain is constantly rewiring itself; it's what it does. Your brain isn't rewiring itself because you played a ton of chess; it's rewiring itself constantly, and it's rewiring itself to play better chess if that's what you do. If you stop playing chess, it'll rewire itself to get worse at chess as it optimizes for other more local concerns. Similarly, all sensory inputs release neurotransmitters. It's how you perceive things, so all perceptions release them, all the way from the bottom raw inputs up through the fully processed semantic content and emotional reactions. You can't say something is bad merely because it causes reactions; you need to do a lot more work and distinguish why some reactions are good and others are bad, which at the very least requires an operational definition of "good" and "bad".
  - lowestprimate 7y ago
    I believe the brain assimilates, deletes and rewires when you're sleeping based on research and book by Matthew Walker.
jkeuhlen 7y ago
I'm curious about this as well. I've hard a hard time finding any real science about this kind of neurochemistry since most of it seems to be "tech is bad for you" blog posts. It seems to be based on something many people recognize in their own lives (getting 'addicted' to email, always on mentality, etc) but I'd love to see some actual evidence of what this does to our brains.
jonhendry18 7y ago
I think the idea is that dopamine is involved in rewarding novelty seeking behavior. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060826180547.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060826180547.h...) A new email is a source of novelty (it's new) and obtaining it requires little effort. So for the brain it's tastier than spending another block of time on some task that you've been working on and isn't new at all.

thrower123 7y ago

I think I get the opposite reaction from receiving an email. It's definitely more on the "Oh hell, what now?" end of the spectrum most of the time.

jonhendry18 7y ago
I think "email" is probably meant to represent anything of that ilk: emails, tweets, text messages, Reddit posts, blog posts, etc.

majos 7y ago

Some variant of this sentence seems to be in every article about how tech is dangerous. Deliberate and effective manipulation of addictive behavior is a real thing tech companies do, but IMO this "dopamine hit" language is so popular because 1. the word dopamine is sciencey and sounds good, plus it has "dope" in there, like the actual drug, and 2. the word hit also reminds people of hard drugs.

jerf 7y ago
It reminds me of the continual stream of articles breathlessly proclaiming that some activity "rewires your brain!", like this is automatically some bad thing. But your brain is constantly rewiring itself; it's what it does. Your brain isn't rewiring itself because you played a ton of chess; it's rewiring itself constantly, and it's rewiring itself to play better chess if that's what you do. If you stop playing chess, it'll rewire itself to get worse at chess as it optimizes for other more local concerns. Similarly, all sensory inputs release neurotransmitters. It's how you perceive things, so all perceptions release them, all the way from the bottom raw inputs up through the fully processed semantic content and emotional reactions. You can't say something is bad merely because it causes reactions; you need to do a lot more work and distinguish why some reactions are good and others are bad, which at the very least requires an operational definition of "good" and "bad".
- lowestprimate 7y ago
  I believe the brain assimilates, deletes and rewires when you're sleeping based on research and book by Matthew Walker.

jkeuhlen 7y ago

I'm curious about this as well. I've hard a hard time finding any real science about this kind of neurochemistry since most of it seems to be "tech is bad for you" blog posts. It seems to be based on something many people recognize in their own lives (getting 'addicted' to email, always on mentality, etc) but I'd love to see some actual evidence of what this does to our brains.

jonhendry18 7y ago

I think the idea is that dopamine is involved in rewarding novelty seeking behavior. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060826180547.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060826180547.h...) A new email is a source of novelty (it's new) and obtaining it requires little effort. So for the brain it's tastier than spending another block of time on some task that you've been working on and isn't new at all.