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

Yet to the brain this distinction is the 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, they’re called—that let you experience satisfaction 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 the realm of what’s at your fingertips, but also motivates you to pursue, to control, and to possess the world beyond your immediate grasp. (View Highlight)

Glamour is a beautiful illusion—the word “glamour” originally meant a literal magic spell—that promises to transcend ordinary life and make the ideal real. It depends on a special combination of mystery and grace. Too much information breaks the spell.

There’s a dark side to dopamine. If you drop a pellet of food into a rat’s cage, the animal will experience a dopamine surge. Who knew that the world was a place where food dropped from the sky? But if you keep dropping pellets every 5 minutes, dopamine stops. The rat knows when to expect the food, so there’s no surprise, and there is no error in the rat’s prediction of a reward. But what if you drop the pellet at random times, so it’s always a surprise? And what if, instead of rats and food pellets, you replace them with people and money?

Love that lasts shifts the emphasis from anticipation to experience; from the fantasy of anything being possible to engagement with reality and all its imperfections. The transition is difficult, and when the world presents an easy way out of a difficult task, we tend to take it. That’s why, when the dopamine firing of early romance ends, many relationships end, too. (View Highlight)

To enjoy the things we have, as opposed to the things that are only possible, our brains must transition from future-oriented dopamine to present-oriented chemicals, a collection of neurotransmitters we call the Here and Now molecules, or the H&Ns. Most people have heard of the H&Ns. They include serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins (your brain’s version of morphine), and a class of chemicals called endocannabinoids (your brain’s version of marijuana). As opposed to the pleasure of anticipation via dopamine, these chemicals give us pleasure from sensation and emotion. In fact, one of the endocannabinoid molecules is called anandamide, named after a Sanskrit word that means joy, bliss, and delight. (View Highlight)

This transition was caught on camera when men and women in the Netherlands were placed in brain scanners and then stimulated to orgasm. The scans showed that sexual climax was associated with decreased activation throughout the prefrontal cortex, a dopaminergic part of the brain responsible for placing deliberate restrictions on behavior. The relaxation of control allowed the activation of H&N circuits necessary for sexual climax. It didn’t matter whether the person being tested was a man or a woman. With few exceptions the brain’s response to orgasm was the same: dopamine off, H&N on. (View Highlight)