The Compass Of Pleasure

The poet Jim Carroll described his first experience mainlining heroin as feeling “like 50,000 orgasms all at once.” Another writer compared intravenous cocaine injection to “orgasm X 1,000.” Putting aside the fanciful arithmetic, there’s a strand of neurochemical truth here: Drugs like heroin and cocaine produce a sustained dopamine surge in key regions of the medial forebrain pleasure circuit, while orgasm produces a fairly brief dopamine surge (not unlike a single hit from a crack pipe). As such, drugs that boost dopamine signaling, like cocaine and amphetamines (and even the L-dopa used to treat Parkinson’s disease), can prolong and enhance orgasm, while drugs that block dopamine receptors or dopamine release, like some antipsychotic drugs, suppress it. …

I'm pleased as punch to be giving a lecture on pleasure and neural function in conjunction with the latest exhibit at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore 

Touch and the Enjoyment of Sculpture: Exploring the Appeal of Renaissance Statuettes

Sunday March 4 at 2:00 p.m.

600 N. Charles Street, Baltimore MD

I'm looking forward to having a conversation on stage at the Rubin Museum  with one of my heroes, novelist Rivka Galchen.  

"Whenever I feel sad, the sad feeling tends to manifest in my seeing humans (myself included) as orangutans.  A human ordering coffee, a human offended when someone cuts in line, a human sprinting to refill a parking meter-- in my moods all those people are orangutans.  And this feeling doesn't make more real the secret emotional lives of orangutans-- that would be one option.  Instead it makes all the humans (with their loves, their hates, their haircuts, their beloved unconsciouses) seem sublimely ridiculous.  …

Baltimore writer Marion Winik knows from experience what neurobiologists are now understanding at a cellular level:  Memory is fluid and is subtly changed by each act of recollection.  Dig this, from her splendid work, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead.  

The Driving Instructor, d. 1985

"How many poems can you write about your father? Maybe one for every day of your life. Your father is the poem inside you when you wake up in the morning, the poem like a spine, shaping how you stand and sit, the poem with you on the toilet, the sink, the coffeepot, the poem that leans back into the driver's seat and spins the steering wheel with one practiced hand. …

"...from the perspective of human evolution, our great capacity is not just that we learn about the world.  The thing that really makes us distinctive is that we can imagine other ways that the world could be.  That's really where our enormous evolutionary juice comes from."

-Alison Gopnik

Iquitos, Peru, 1932.

Emilo Andrade Gomez was born in the Peruvian Amazon, the son of a white father and an Amerindian mother. In 1932, at the age of fourteen, he was given the herbal hallucinogenic drink called ayahuasca by local shamans in order to recover his strength following a period of illness. He saw visions that the shamans explained were revelations that he was chosen by the plants in the ayahuasca brew to receive knowledge from them. He was to learn traditional medicine and become a shaman himself. This was an elaborate and extended process that required him to live in near isolation in the jungle for a period of three years. …

“Would that captions went with people’s foreheads.’’ 

-J.D. Salinger (who was notoriously hard of hearing in his later years)

via New York Times

Lord Byron, the British romantic and satiric poet of the early nineteenth century, wrote, “Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.” While Byron was describing the effects of alcohol, the larger truth applies to psychoactive drugs generally. Because most are derived from plant extracts (cannabis, cocaine, caffeine, ibogaine, khat, heroin, nicotine) or from simple recipes applied to plants (alcohol, amphetamine) or fungi (mescaline), they are widely available and widely used.

In fact, intoxication with psychoactive drugs is not an exclusively human proclivity. …

This wonderfully snarky collection of "the 30 harshest author-on-author insults in history"  from flavorwire.com makes me feel grateful for my comparatively easy ride with reviewers.

My op-ed piece on this topic, inspired by the stories of Messrs. Schwarzneggar, Straus-Kahn, Berlusconi and Gingrich, appeared in today's Philadelphia Inquirer. 

French women with false beards at a recent protest. 

JACQUES BRINON/ Associated Press

Jeff Tweedy, leader of the roots-inflected rock bands Wilco and Uncle Tupelo, struggled mightily with various drug addictions, most notably to prescription painkillers, alcohol, and cigarettes. These were coincident with, and in some cases triggered by, chronic migraines, major depression, and panic attacks that have plagued him for years. After a successful rehab and several years of drug-free living he had this to say about his life:

I’ve never felt better. I’ve never been healthier. . . . I run four or five miles, four or five times a week, but I broke both my legs running too much last summer. …

Those of you who live in the New York City area are welcome to come to the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art (at 150 W. 17th Street) on Sunday, April 17th at 6:00p.m. for a conversation between a neuroscientist (me) and a master chocolatier (Jacques Torres). The topic, of course, will be Vice, Virtue and the Brain's Pleasure Circuits, with a particular emphasis on chocolate, free samples of which will be provided by Chef Torres. More information (and tickets) may be found at

http://www.rmanyc.org/events/load/1104

These days most of us are willing to believe that drug addiction— including alcoholism— is a disease. Still, we harbor a sneaking suspicion that it’s really a disease of the weak-willed, the spiritually unfit, or people who are not quite like us. The comedian Mitch Hedberg understood this when he riffed:

Alcoholism is a disease, but it’s the only one you can get yelled at for having.

“Goddamn it, Otto, you’re an alcoholic!”

“Goddamn it, Otto, you have lupus!”

One of those two doesn’t sound right.

Whatever our prejudices, the truth is, given the right circumstances (which can include factors like high stress, early drug …

Nazca Desert, Peru (top) and inside the brain of a young rat (bottom).

Recently, hundreds of indigenous people staged a protest in front of the US embassy in La Paz Bolivia in which they chewed coca leaf and chanted “Coca es medicina!”  The protest was peaceful and good-natured with protestors offering coca leaves to the Bolivian police, some of whom were more than happy to join in.

They were supporting a Bolivian government campaign to amend the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs to remove language that bans the chewing of coca leaf. Bolivia wants to amend a UN drugs treaty that bans chewing coca, which is an ancient tradition in the Andes.  Bolivian President Evo Morales, who is a former coca grower, has long advocated the recognition of coca as a plant of great medicinal, cultural and religious importance that is distinct from cocaine, which is a much more potent psychoactive drug that must be extracted froma large amount of coca leaves.

…

There's only one place to go...

"Unusually for a twenty-year-old (The privilege followed from his peculiar situation), Keith was aware that he was going to die.  More than that, he knew that when the process began, the only thing that would matter was how it had gone with women.  As he lies dying, the man will search his past for love and life.  And this is true, I think.  Keith was good on the big picture.  But the immediate situation, the immediate process-- this he often saw with unreliable eyes."

--Martin Amis "The Pregnant Widow"

Come get in touch with your inner bonobo.

This drawing, from a brain dissection performed in Japan in 1772, confirms my deepest fears: I've spent my entire adult life and millions of taxpayer dollars studying pasta.

via pinktentacle.com

My brilliant and hilarious cousin, Mark Feldstein, has written an engaging account of the long-running feud between Richard Nixon and the syndicated columnist Jack Anderson.  It's entitled "Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson and the Rise of Washington's Scandal Culture" and it reads like a political thriller.

Don't trust my (admittedly biased) opinion?  Michael Schaub at NPR says:

"Nixon and Anderson were both extremely controversial figures, but Feldstein proves remarkably calm and even-handed throughout the book, even while discussing some of the men's lowest moments (Nixon's resignation in 1973; Anderson's inexplicable decision to censor his own expose on the Iran-Contra scandal). …

...it's good to know that we'll be able to fund neuroscience research with a bake sale or two.

viathescientist.com

Everyone wants a free lunch.  The desire to improve cognitive function by simply taking a pill is so strong that in 2005 over $1 billion worth of “smart herbal” supplements were sold in the USA despite little proof of their effectiveness.  Mostly, these supplements peddled in vitamin stores and on the internet, are a scam.  However, this suggests the more important question: Is it possible to make real “smart pills”?

In order to have successful learning of facts and events several things have to happen.  First, one must pay attention, stay focused on the relevant information and use working memory effectively during the task.…

On a lovely summer day, August 1, 2010.

In 2005, Khytam Dawood and co-workers reported in the journal Twin Research and Human Genetics an anonymous survey of 3080 women, many drawn from the Australian Twin Registry, which included both monozygotic (so-called indentical) twins and dizygotic (fraternal) twins. These women were asked to report their frequency of orgasm from 3 types of sexual activity: intercourse with a partner, sex with a partner not involving intercourse and masturbation.  23% of women reported that they "always or almost always" achieved orgasm during sexual intercourse, 27% with partner sex other than intercourse and 38% during masturbation.  

…

Just now digging into Jonathan Lethem's newest novel Chronic City.  What a delight.  This could turn out to be his best book yet.  And it's rich in neuropharmacological metaphor to boot.

"He had the waitress refill his gallon-sized Coke, too, then, as our afternoon turned to evening, washed it ll down with black coffee.  In our talk marijuana confusion now gave way to caffeinated jags, like a cloud bank penetrated by buzzing Fokker airplanes.  Did I read The New Yorker?  The question had a dangerous urgency.  It wasn't any one writer or article he was worried about, but the font."

I may not know much but I know enough not to write fiction.  That doesn't keep me from enjoying these lists from some of my author-heroes.

From Margaret Atwood:

1 Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.

2 If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type.

3 Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do.

4 If you're using a computer, always safeguard new text with a ­memory stick.

…

Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles is one of the funniest books I've read in years.  It also has (pathos and) bonus neuro-nuggets, like this about the narrator's father, a Polish survivor of Dachau:

"One of my father's ironies was his adopted racial attitudes-- he tossed the word NEE-gar around like doubloons from a parade float and was a party-line seg voter.  History, even scalding personal history, doesn't always transmit the expected lessons.  Memory and meaning, I've found, often book separate rooms in the brain."

it's hard to beat a Golgi-stained neuron as your art of choice.

Via the Science Tattoo Emporium at Carl Zimmer's Loom Blog

Of the four books I read while traveling recently, the most enjoyable by far was Michael Chabon's new collection of autobiographical essays entitled  Manhood For Amateurs.  Dig this splendid nugget.

"My father, born in the gray-and-silver Movietone year of 1938, was part of a generation of Americans who, in their 20s and 30s, approached the concept of intimacy, of authenticity, and open emotion, with a certain tentative abruptness, like people used to automatic transmission learning how to drive a stick shift. They wanted intimacy, but were not sure how far they could trust it to take them. My father didn't hug me a lot or kiss me. …

"When the Epiphytes begin to grow on the Power Lines then the End of Days is nigh and a Shadow shall soon fall across the land."

Otavalo, Ecuador, December 19, 2009

I'm enjoying a new book on the history of neuroscience by Prof. Charlie Gross entitled A Hole in The Head(MIT Press, 2009).  It leads off, of course, with a splendid discussion of trepanation through the ages.  My favorite line: "These findings finally established that Neolithic man could carry out survival trepanation but left unresolved the motivation for this operation."

Wonderful, disturbing images abound, like this one from Diderot's Encyclopedia of 1761.  Is that a neck there or is this figure supposed to depict a free-range head?

A parasite walks into a bar and orders a beer.  

The bartender says, "We don't serve parasites here."  

The parasite, deeply offended, replies, "You're a terrible host."

o

I'm proud to be included in the new volume Everything I Need To Know I Learned From A Children's Book, edited by Anita Silvey, in which "more than 100 leaders from the arts, sciences, politics, business and other fields recall a children's book they loved, and its impact on their lives."  I'm particularly humbled to be in the company of so many of my heroes-- folks like Alison Gopnik, Pete Seeger, Steve Wozniak, Ursula K. Le Guin, Anne Tyler, Maurice Sendak and Andrew Wyeth.  Proceeds from this book benefit children's literacy programs in the USA.

What was your favorite book as a kid?

Hands down:  It was…

At the National Zoo, Washington D.C.

100% Pumpkin-free!

UPDATE:

But not in Japan where the gourd endures....

When I was in the first grade, I went to an after-school program at the Jewish Community Center in my home town of Santa Monica, California.  In the lobby, they had a large banner soliciting donations to the United Jewish Appeal that read “Give ‘Til It Hurts.”  I didn’t know what it was about, and found the whole thing vaguely disturbing.  Whenever possible, I would navigate around the lobby to avoid looking at it. Several months later it was replaced with a similar banner-- same font, same logo--  that read “Give ‘Til It Feels Good.”  “Freakin’ adults,” I thought.  “Why does everything have to be so confusing?”

I love buying songs from the iTunes store even through I know they’re messing with my medial forebrain pleasure circuits.  Quite simply, the folks at Apple have taken the lesson of cocaine and applied it to music.  Pleasure with a fast onset, like smoked cocaine, is more addictive that pleasure with a slow onset, like chewed coca leaf.  When I purchase a song on iTunes, it starts playing on my computer’s speakers within a minute or so.  Sweet, rapid reward.  But do they send the billing statement right away?  Nope.  It’s all done electronically, so the billing statement could arrive by email in a few minutes.  …

Jane has been feeling totally stressed out.  She is 18 years old and lives with three other girls in a small apartment.  She and her roommates bicker a lot and Jane is clearly at the bottom of the social order.  The others push her around and she tends to avoid them.  Lately, she can’t help but grimace when one of the dominant, bossy girls approaches.  When she lived by herself, Jane was slim and ate a balanced diet, but since she has been in this pressure-cooker of an apartment, she’s taken to snacking all day and all night and choosing high-fat foods over more healthy fare.  Her weight and waistline have increased significantly.  …

Well, probably not.  If you have an individual or institutional subscription to JN, you can read all about it here. 

My old pal, Paul Lockhart, has written a brilliant critique of contemporary mathematics education entitled "A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form."  

"Sadly, our present system of mathematics education is precisely this kind of nightmare. In fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul crushing

ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education. …

In the future, every synapse will be famous for 15 milliseconds.  In this spirit it is worth noting that Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang briefly mentioned me in their New York Times blog post comparing computers and brains.  Gotta call Mom.

Those of you who are not already sick of the sound of my voice are welcome to check out  a podcast interview I did recently with D.J. Grothe on his show "Point of Inquiry."

Jeff Tweedy, leader of the bands Wilco and Uncle Tupelo, struggled with an addiction to prescription painkillers and cigarettes.  After successful rehab and several years of clean living he had this to say about his life:

“I've never felt better. I've never been healthier. … I run four or five miles, four or five times a week, but I broke both my legs running too much last summer.  I had stress fractures in both my tibias from running too much. You know, once you're an addict, you're always an addict, so just because I found something good to do doesn't mean I'm not going to hurt myself doing it.”

…

Over at Worth1000, the new Photoshopping contest theme is "Mad Scientists"  This happy guy just got his grant funded by the NIH.

...but this guy really, really likes the cerebellum.  In sagittal section, no less.

via streetanatomy.com

I'm reading Rivka Galchen's first novel, Atmospheric Disturbances, and it's so intelligent and funny and sad that it's giving me a woody.  Tell me that you don't want to read it after this snippet.  I dare you.

"Functionally speaking, Harvey's main problem-- or some might say his "conflict with the consensus view of reality"--  stemmed from a fixed magical belief that he had special skills for controlling weather phenomena, and that he was, consequently, employed as a secret agent for the Royal Academy of Meteorology, an institute whose existence a consensus view of reality would (and this surprised me at the time) confirm.  …

Steven Rose, reviews The Accidental Mind and some other recent titles in The Guardian (UK) and says:  

"There is no general "command centre"; rather, all regions are connected by multiple bidirectional pathways, making the brain the paradigm of a self-organising distributed system. Linden provides an accessible and up to date guide through this maze, if you can cope with an excessively cheerful transatlantic style."

Excessively cheerful?  Fuck that shit.  From now on, I'm gonna be a curmudgeon.