theslasher
psychonaut
- Jun 12, 2023
- 184
Has anyone else been learning about neuroscience and the chemicals in our brain that effect our mood and behavior?
I'm sure most of you have watched videos about Dr. Andrew Huberman. He's amazing at articulating more complex studies to the public about dopamine and how you should NOT over stimulate your brain with instant gratification activities because that will overload (and possibly damage) your dopamine receptors making you naturally more depressed. I'd imagine a good amount of people know about this, but if you haven't heard of this I suggest you check out Andrew Huberman's podcasts and/or videos.
Anyways, while that is amazing, that is not what I came to talk about today. I just started reading Jordan Peterson's book "Twelve Rules For Life: An Antidote For Chaos". It has been sitting on my shelf for a couple months collecting dust, but today I finally felt compelled to pick it up. Reading the Foreward was rather boring, but the Overture right after that spoke about things I've always thought about, but didn't know how to articulate. I highly recommend you read this book if you haven't, even if you just go to barnes and nobles and read the Overture...
And then I got onto the first chapter, or Rule 1 which states "Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back". Peterson likes to use stories to explain his points, so I'll quickly paraphrase what I learned in this chapter so far. He discusses animals such as birds and lobsters who fight over their territory. In one subsection of the chapter that's called "The Neuroscience of Defeat and Victory" he discusses what happens when a lobster loses a battle to a stronger lobster over their territory. Their brain chemistry completely changes, and the ratio of two main chemicals in the brain change significantly. Those two chemicals are serotonin and octopamine. The lobster with high levels of serotonin and low levels of octopamine was cocky and less likely to back down when challenged (due to serotonin regulating posterior flexion making it appear more tall and dangerous). The losing lobster's brain changes entirely to accommodate it's new lowly / subordinate position.
But interestingly enough, when they gave serotonin to the lobster who lost, that lobster actually acted more like the winning lobster. It acted more cocky and confident, and even advanced on lobsters it lost to before, and then fought harder and longer. Similarly, when depressed humans take drugs that increase serotonin, that behavior is somewhat reflected, especially in regards to increasing confidence. Now I'm personally not a fan of the doctors or buying medicine so I looked up ways to naturally increase serotonin.
This is the first article that came up and it seems pretty compelling but also simple. I think I'll try a few of these things out.
https://www.healthline.com/health/how-to-increase-serotonin#diet
Remember, just because the world didn't do anything to help you, doesn't mean you can't at least find ways to take care of yourself. Learning about neuroscience in my free time has been quite liberating. It's given me a purely logical scientific understanding that's helped me navigate through the world. Just my two cents from someone who has always wanted and thought about CTB as a kid and even up until about 20 years old. But nowadays, even though on paper my life isn't good, I can't imagine myself wanting to CTB. I think a large part of that is due to my increased clarity on not only the world, but the mind. When you don't have a fully accurate understanding of this world, it's like you're playing a life or death game of chess but you can only see half of the squares, and they are blocked from your vision at random. Or like someone gave you the instructions, but threw out some important rules and threw in a some false rules. How could you possibly win the game when you can't even see where half of your pieces are let alone your opponents pieces? For whatever reason if you feel like you've lost all meaning or purpose to life, I recommend you learn as much as you can about the things that interest you most. For me, those things are not necessarily what they teach in school, but rather, philosophy, psychology, the subconscious mind, neuroscience, genetics / DNA of other species with common ancestors to humans, history (especially on the origin of religion), and space. Learning about space and it's unfathomable scale has in many ways decreased my anxiety knowing that our problems don't matter in the grand scheme of things, but learning so much and becoming and atheist has made me lose meaning and purpose. Luckily the book by Jordan Peterson seems to have struck a chord with me at the right time and given me a lot of clarity as he also discusses how to have purpose and meaning in your life, even with the lack of a religious belief system.
So moral of the story guys, keep on learning.
Anyways sorry for rambling, thanks for coming to my random Ted Talk lol.
I'm sure most of you have watched videos about Dr. Andrew Huberman. He's amazing at articulating more complex studies to the public about dopamine and how you should NOT over stimulate your brain with instant gratification activities because that will overload (and possibly damage) your dopamine receptors making you naturally more depressed. I'd imagine a good amount of people know about this, but if you haven't heard of this I suggest you check out Andrew Huberman's podcasts and/or videos.
Anyways, while that is amazing, that is not what I came to talk about today. I just started reading Jordan Peterson's book "Twelve Rules For Life: An Antidote For Chaos". It has been sitting on my shelf for a couple months collecting dust, but today I finally felt compelled to pick it up. Reading the Foreward was rather boring, but the Overture right after that spoke about things I've always thought about, but didn't know how to articulate. I highly recommend you read this book if you haven't, even if you just go to barnes and nobles and read the Overture...
And then I got onto the first chapter, or Rule 1 which states "Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back". Peterson likes to use stories to explain his points, so I'll quickly paraphrase what I learned in this chapter so far. He discusses animals such as birds and lobsters who fight over their territory. In one subsection of the chapter that's called "The Neuroscience of Defeat and Victory" he discusses what happens when a lobster loses a battle to a stronger lobster over their territory. Their brain chemistry completely changes, and the ratio of two main chemicals in the brain change significantly. Those two chemicals are serotonin and octopamine. The lobster with high levels of serotonin and low levels of octopamine was cocky and less likely to back down when challenged (due to serotonin regulating posterior flexion making it appear more tall and dangerous). The losing lobster's brain changes entirely to accommodate it's new lowly / subordinate position.
But interestingly enough, when they gave serotonin to the lobster who lost, that lobster actually acted more like the winning lobster. It acted more cocky and confident, and even advanced on lobsters it lost to before, and then fought harder and longer. Similarly, when depressed humans take drugs that increase serotonin, that behavior is somewhat reflected, especially in regards to increasing confidence. Now I'm personally not a fan of the doctors or buying medicine so I looked up ways to naturally increase serotonin.
This is the first article that came up and it seems pretty compelling but also simple. I think I'll try a few of these things out.
https://www.healthline.com/health/how-to-increase-serotonin#diet
Remember, just because the world didn't do anything to help you, doesn't mean you can't at least find ways to take care of yourself. Learning about neuroscience in my free time has been quite liberating. It's given me a purely logical scientific understanding that's helped me navigate through the world. Just my two cents from someone who has always wanted and thought about CTB as a kid and even up until about 20 years old. But nowadays, even though on paper my life isn't good, I can't imagine myself wanting to CTB. I think a large part of that is due to my increased clarity on not only the world, but the mind. When you don't have a fully accurate understanding of this world, it's like you're playing a life or death game of chess but you can only see half of the squares, and they are blocked from your vision at random. Or like someone gave you the instructions, but threw out some important rules and threw in a some false rules. How could you possibly win the game when you can't even see where half of your pieces are let alone your opponents pieces? For whatever reason if you feel like you've lost all meaning or purpose to life, I recommend you learn as much as you can about the things that interest you most. For me, those things are not necessarily what they teach in school, but rather, philosophy, psychology, the subconscious mind, neuroscience, genetics / DNA of other species with common ancestors to humans, history (especially on the origin of religion), and space. Learning about space and it's unfathomable scale has in many ways decreased my anxiety knowing that our problems don't matter in the grand scheme of things, but learning so much and becoming and atheist has made me lose meaning and purpose. Luckily the book by Jordan Peterson seems to have struck a chord with me at the right time and given me a lot of clarity as he also discusses how to have purpose and meaning in your life, even with the lack of a religious belief system.
So moral of the story guys, keep on learning.
Anyways sorry for rambling, thanks for coming to my random Ted Talk lol.
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