"How we Decide" is the first verse to be fooled by emotion

This section is the beginning of chapter Iii.

Introduction to the Book

This section reads testimonials: The consequences of the emotional system's disengagement from control are devastating.

Ann Klinestiver, an English teacher in a high school, was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. In class, as she prepares to talk to the students about some of Shakespeare's deeds, her hands begin to shake uncontrollably, and then the arms soften. "I can't control my body, I stare at my arm and tell it what I want to do, but it's useless. ”

Parkinson's syndrome is a disease of the dopamine system, and its symptoms begin with the brain's ability to control the body's motor function associated with the death of dopamine neurons in that part. No one knows the cause of the death of these cells, but the loss is irreversible. The manifestation of Parkinson's symptoms began with the death of 80% of related cells.

Ann's doctor gave it requip, a mechanism that mimics the activity of the dopamine system. Although there are various genres of treatment for dopamine syndrome, the basic principles are the same: increasing the number of dopamine, so that the remaining number of dopamine neurons can work more efficiently. "At first, the drug was like a miracle, and all of my body movements resumed. "Ann Road. But as time went on, the amount of medicine she needed was increasing in order to maintain a normal life.

After the diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, Ann began gambling, "I have never been interested in gambling, my father is a Christian, told me gambling is a sin." But now she is addicted to gambling, and immediately after being closed by the casino security guard, she will gamble on the Internet.

After a year of gambling, Ann lost more than $250,000. In order to gamble, she sold her original house, most of the furniture, her own jewelry, car. "I know I'm ruining my life, but I just can't stop it, it's a very bad feeling. Ann's husband also left her, and he promised that if Ann could control his own gambling, he would come back, but Ann couldn't do it and always recurred.

In 2006, Ann stopped using dopamine to treat drugs, her motor function problems still exist, but that kind of gambling impulse disappeared. "I haven't gambled for more than 18 months. "She said with a proud voice.

Such incidents are quite common, and medical research has shown that 13 of patients who take similar medications are addicted to gambling. Those who did not have any history of gambling began to gamble and squander their possessions.

Why is excessive dopamine causing such events? Think about how Laohuji (sensitive words) works: Throw a coin and pull the lever. Then the rollers begin to Hula啦. Still after the image determines the benefits of gamblers, because Laohuji is programmed to operate, long-term play, gambling people will lose the basic. This is when we look back at a chapter on the role of the dopamine system: providing predictive mechanisms, whenever we play Laohuji, the dopamine-related nervous system is desperately calculating what the model of the machine is, predicting the long-term benefits that this thing brings to the body.

When the dopamine system is stimulated positively, it increases the secretion concentration of dopamine, laohuji unpredictable results, and occasionally stimulates the dopamine system. People who are addicted to Laohuji originate from the sharply secreted dopamine when they get rewarded.

For patients with Parkinson's disease, their dopamine receptors are so low that when they get rewarded, a large amount of dopamine is flooded throughout the brain, and they get a much happier sense of happiness than most people play Laohuji.

Here we can see that there is a good side to emotion. (Help the four-minute guardian to decide quickly, etc.) also has its dark side, they may deceive our wisdom.

The dopamine system can help us predict what is predictable and sometimes lead us into the wrong direction, especially when the things we face are more random. A very short experiment: a small mouse is placed in a T-shaped maze, the left and right end of the maze are distributed with food, distribution is random, but on the whole, the food is 60% of the total. How did the little mouse do it? After several experiments, it became clear that the return on the left was even greater. After that, the little mouse ran straight to the left of the maze every time, instead of exploring other areas.

But the more complex humans of the dopamine system do not have the high efficiency of mice, in the same experiment, (of course, reward is not food) we humans can not solve the mystery from randomness, it is difficult to find the essence of 60%-40%.

Randomness is a part of what our brain's emotional systems are not good at, and when confronted with something more random, the dopamine nervous system is very painful. Apple first launched the "Shake Cut song" function, all the songs are to be extracted, but, many customers firmly believe that there must be a specific algorithm to manipulate the probability of each song is chosen, they feel absolutely not equal to the selection of songs. In the end, Apple was under pressure to really develop a set of algorithms, "we make it look random by adding randomness to the rocking-cut song." "That's what Steve Jobs said.

"How we Decide" is the first verse to be fooled by emotion