Why are some people content with routine and simple daily tasks while others constantly need stimulation, or self-stimulation? Whether through new creative activities, intellectual games or entrepreneurship. Does the opportunity to learn something new and complex energize and energize you? Are you stimulated by new ideas and imaginative scenarios? Here's what's probably going on in your brain.
As we evolved, we recorded a number of brain behaviors that are now innate in most of us. They include the ability to regulate our defensive and offensive impulses, for the more primitive side, and that of concentration and prioritization of tasks from an intellectual point of view. At the same time, we have also developed the ability to make sense of what is unknown to us, more abstract. Engaging with the unknown allows us to integrate new or unexpected events with existing knowledge and experiences, a process necessary for brain growth.
And dopamine production is essential for growth… However, many misconceptions about the role of dopamine in cognition and behavior have been circulating for many years. Dopamine is often referred to as the “feel-good molecule,” but that is a grossly mischaracterization of this neurotransmitter. As neuroscientist Colin DeYoung points out, dopamine is actually the “neuromodulator of exploration”.
The main role of dopamine is, to simplify, to make us feel desire. It is in our brain that we receive the greatest amount of dopamine, and it is this that gives us the feeling of reward. But this amount of dopamine does not guarantee that we will actually enjoy the thing (informational or material) once it is given to us.
Dopamine represents a great energetic advantage for our brain, and therefore for life in general. It stimulates our motivation to explore and facilitates the cognitive and behavioral processes that allow us to extract the maximum satisfaction from the activities we carry out, even abstract ones.
If dopamine isn't just about feel-good, then why does the feel-good myth persist in the public imagination? Scott Barry Kaufman, a humanistic psychologist, believes this is primarily because a lot of research has been done on dopamine in regards to its role in motivating us to explore our more primal rewards, like chocolate, social attention, social status, sexual partners, gambling, or drugs like cocaine.
However, in recent years, other brain dopamine pathways have been proposed that are strongly related to the “reward value of information”. People who score high on the General Exploration Tendency test are not only chemically driven to engage in behavioral forms of exploration, but also tend to become energized by the possibility of discovering new things. information and extract meaning and mental growth from their experiences. These “cognitive needs,” as humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow calls them, are just as important as other, more primitive human needs to becoming a whole person.
How active is your dopaminergic pathway? If some or all of these statements describe you, it could well be that dopamine is flowing more (or better) in your prefrontal cortex:
If your profile corresponds to this description, then you are undoubtedly a curious person, perhaps even creative and who likes to undertake. This behavioral pattern would therefore be linked to the way dopamine circulates in the different brain areas. In this kind of person, the privileged area could well be the prefrontal cortex.
Now, if you are concerned, you would probably like to get at least a partial answer to the question:why am I interested in science, technology and/or other interesting subjects while others think only of material rewards, sex and money? A beginning of an answer would be the following:you may be very sensitive to the value of information as a reward. Today, since everything is changing very quickly, this is probably a significant advantage for your future.
