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This popularization of neuroscience dumbed down to the point of losing the grain of truth is really upsetting. 90 billion neurons in our brain, interconnected

This popularization of neuroscience dumbed down to the point of losing the grain of truth is really upsetting. 90 billion neurons in our brain, interconnected in some combinatorial number of ways, but all our behavior and inner world boils down to the interaction of a few dozen neurotransmitters. Yup, sounds about right.

GuB-42 6y ago
Why not? Psychoactive drugs are small molecules that can completely change your behavior by doing what your natural neurotransmitters do. You can call them the global variables of your brain, on which the billions of neurons rely. Our brain "code" is messier than anything mad programmers could have produced. Global variables are generally not a good practice, so of course our brain has global variables. And of course they are reused for completely unrelated things, for example lactation and the immune system, because life is like that. Life never read about pure functions and design patterns and will happily use floating point numbers as pointers and jump between two instructions. Back to the subject, I think it is just a case of circular reasoning. Dopamine is part of the reward system, and addictive stuff cause dopamine to be released. To limit addiction, limit things that cause dopamine to be released. So, to limit addiction, you have to limit things that are addictive.
- nmfisher 6y ago
  > they are reused for completely unrelated things, for example lactation and the immune system Can you expand on this a bit more?
  - GuB-42 6y ago
    It is just from the Wikipedia article on dopamine, but it is not uncommon for neurotransmitters to have many unrelated purposes, both in the body and the brain. Serotonin, the other "pleasurable" neurotransmitter does pretty much everything. It makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. It is easier to repurpose a molecule we can already produce than to build an entirely new pathway.
james_s_tayler 6y ago
86 billion right?

GuB-42 6y ago

Why not? Psychoactive drugs are small molecules that can completely change your behavior by doing what your natural neurotransmitters do. You can call them the global variables of your brain, on which the billions of neurons rely. Our brain "code" is messier than anything mad programmers could have produced. Global variables are generally not a good practice, so of course our brain has global variables. And of course they are reused for completely unrelated things, for example lactation and the immune system, because life is like that. Life never read about pure functions and design patterns and will happily use floating point numbers as pointers and jump between two instructions. Back to the subject, I think it is just a case of circular reasoning. Dopamine is part of the reward system, and addictive stuff cause dopamine to be released. To limit addiction, limit things that cause dopamine to be released. So, to limit addiction, you have to limit things that are addictive.

nmfisher 6y ago
> they are reused for completely unrelated things, for example lactation and the immune system Can you expand on this a bit more?
- GuB-42 6y ago
  It is just from the Wikipedia article on dopamine, but it is not uncommon for neurotransmitters to have many unrelated purposes, both in the body and the brain. Serotonin, the other "pleasurable" neurotransmitter does pretty much everything. It makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. It is easier to repurpose a molecule we can already produce than to build an entirely new pathway.

james_s_tayler 6y ago

86 billion right?