Informative

Very informative and interesting. Well presented and good for someone with little scientific knowledge. However people with scientific knowledge a little underwhelming at times.

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Interesting science book but some more interesting than others

When I began this book, I personally was not impressed and almost gave up halfway through. I wasn’t quite sure what this book was trying to achieve. I’m always interested in books on psychology and behaviour. However, there didn’t seem to be a thread or continuity to it. The author suggests that this book is more of a buffet where you pick up interesting pieces, but a long piece about the benefits of holding in your urine and how it helped David Cameron make a powerful and persuasive speech comes across as a bit odd. And it’s not like he was so wonderful later on in his career, when he became less persuasive. Was it because he’d gone to the toilet. Perhaps it’s more like a series of new scientist articles.

I did find the information around addiction interesting. “Kent Berridge, working at the University of Michigan, fed rats a sugary syrup and noted that when he did so they would lick their lips in pleasure and keep coming back for more. We already knew that the sensation of pleasure was controlled by the release of dopamine inside the brain. But when Berridge used surgery to knock out the dopamine-producing parts of the brain, the rats no longer wanted the sugar syrup, but when they had the syrup they still licked their lips in pleasure. The rats still liked the sugar but no longer wanted it. This was a key discovery for the science of addiction as it dispelled the myth that addicts both liked and wanted the source of their addiction. While the two emotions of like and want are usually correlated in us, it does not need to be so. A drug addict will want the drug even when they have long since ceased to like and enjoy the act or results of taking it. Similarly, with a behavioural internet addiction the user may no longer enjoy their time online but they keep doing it as there is a more powerful want to carry on”. Now that was really fascinating. But then the book picked up and perhaps focused more on areas of behaviour that I do find more interesting. Some samples, a pigeon learns to tap a button for a pellet, if you then only allow it a pellet every 10 taps, it gives up but at random and less frequent amounts, and it begins to get a hit of dopamine and perceives a bigger reward than a pellet on every occasion and is even more rewarded. And that’s how slot machines in gambling and Vegas work and make people addicted to them. Smart phones and Facebook have learnt the same strategy. And the information about Alzheimer’s and the link to gum “disease was really fascinating. So some interesting facts but not all of it. Clearly written. However, if you have the time, I would suggest reading Robert Sapolsky “behave“ – it’s a lot longer but it’s brilliant and the best book on behaviour I have ever read.

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