“Keep an exercise plan. Add exercise on your to-do list or calendar and check it off when you complete it. Planning activates the prefrontal cortex, and checking it off the list releases dopamine. Win-win.”
Source: The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time
“Once you start being productive, dopamine is released in the striatum and parts of the prefrontal cortex. Suddenly you’ll have more energy and motivation to do the thing you really need to do.”
Source: The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time
“Serotonin helps with impulse control, willpower, and resilience. Dopamine is important in enjoyment and habits. Norepinephrine modulates focus and concentration. Oxytocin is essential to close relationships. Other neurotransmitters are important too, like GABA (antianxiety), endorphins (elation and pain relief), and endocannabinoids (appetite and peacefulness). Other chemicals, like BDNF, help grow new neurons, and even proteins in the immune system play a role.”
Source: The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time
“The neurobiological side of the hypothesis is proposed that a) the feats cause, at the brain level, a rise in dopamine b) delusions are feats of fantasy and fantasy shield feats that cause this same award, or relieve punishment c) the neuroleptics show efficacy in reducing delusions since they inhibit dopamine receptors and take away the prize for self-deception”
Source: THE SHIELD FEATS THEORY: a different hypothesis concerning the etiology of delusions and other disorders.
“Tell me the rest of the story. I can't wait. I just can't." And hadn't he known this was coming? Yes. If someone had delivered all twenty reels of the new Rocket Man chapter-play to Annie's house, would she have waited, parcelling out only one a week, or even one a day?
He looked at the half-demolished avalanche of her sundae, one cherry almost buried in whipped cream, another floating in chocolate syrup. He remembered the way the living room had looked, with sugar-glazed dishes everywhere.
No. Annie was not the waiting type. Annie would have watched all twenty episodes in one night, even if they gave her eyestrain and a splitting headache.
Because Annie loved sweet things.”
“The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, . . . was all about: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever.”
Source: Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
“A mouse who fails to get the cheese tries again without kicking herself for being an idiot.”
Source: Habits of a Happy Brain: Retrain Your Brain to Boost Your Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin, & Endorphin Levels
“In this world, the phrase ‘we belong to each other’ is more than an ideal—it is a way of life.”
Source: Subversive Acts of Humanity : A Survival Guide for Choosing Evolution over Self-Destruction
“When the suffering begins, our brain pleads with us to not think too far into the future. I can’t endure 60 minutes of this, but I can do 10 minutes. I can’t get through 8 weeks of solid exercise, but I can get through today. The neurological beauty of segmentation is that once the segment is completed, you get a mini-squirt of dopamine (pleasure juice) that resets the coping clock.”
Source: The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down and Rise to the Occasion
“Medications used to treat psychiatric disorders are commonly referred to as psychotropic drugs. These drugs are commonly described by their major clinical application, for example, antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, anxiolytics, hypnotics, cognitive enhancers, and stimulants. A problem with this approach is that these drugs have multiple indicators. For example, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRls) are both antidepressants and anxiolytics, and the serotonin-dopamine antagonists (SDAs) are both anxiolytics and mood stabilizers.”
Source: Kaplan and Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry: Behavioral Sciences/Clinical Psychiatry