14 August 09 (am)

Workout notes plan is for a swim over lunch; walk afterward if I am up to it (it is pretty outside)

Articles for the day

I spend too much time on the internet and I do very long distance footraces. I also like to think about and solve mathematics problems. Is there a connection? 3-quarks daily points us to this Slate article. Here is the key part:

University of Michigan professor of psychology Kent Berridge has spent more than two decades figuring out how the brain experiences pleasure. Like Panksepp, he, too, has come to the conclusion that what James Olds’ rats were stimulating was not their reward center. In a series of experiments, he and other researchers have been able to tease apart that the mammalian brain has separate systems for what Berridge calls wanting and liking.

Wanting is Berridge’s equivalent for Panksepp’s seeking system. It is the liking system that Berridge believes is the brain’s reward center. When we experience pleasure, it is our own opioid system, rather than our dopamine system, that is being stimulated. This is why the opiate drugs induce a kind of blissful stupor so different from the animating effect of cocaine and amphetamines. Wanting and liking are complementary. The former catalyzes us to action; the latter brings us to a satisfied pause. Seeking needs to be turned off, if even for a little while, so that the system does not run in an endless loop. When we get the object of our desire (be it a Twinkie or a sexual partner), we engage in consummatory acts that Panksepp says reduce arousal in the brain and temporarily, at least, inhibit our urge to seek.

But our brains are designed to more easily be stimulated than satisfied. “The brain seems to be more stingy with mechanisms for pleasure than for desire,” Berridge has said. This makes evolutionary sense. Creatures that lack motivation, that find it easy to slip into oblivious rapture, are likely to lead short (if happy) lives. So nature imbued us with an unquenchable drive to discover, to explore. Stanford University neuroscientist Brian Knutson has been putting people in MRI scanners and looking inside their brains as they play an investing game. He has consistently found that the pictures inside our skulls show that the possibility of a payoff is much more stimulating than actually getting one.

Read the rest; I know that sometimes, as soon as I meet a goal, rather than savor it I start asking “ok, what is next?” That is true for me in athletics, mathematics and in political campaigns.

Social Science and Psychology It is true: single women tend to like a guy more if he is married! Ok, that is what this study suggests; you might argue that the result is still not rigorously proven yet.

More on human relations: one way police (and investigators) can spot liars: liars make up a story and try to stick to a script; truth tellers tell a less organized story, but don’t stumble as much if, say, they try to tell it in reverse chronological order.

Moving to political issues You may have heard that one conservative source said that Stephen Hawking (famous scientist who is wheelchair bound) would be dead if he were in the UK’s health system. Well, Dr. Hawking IS a UK subject and has gotten his treatment by the UK’s NHS (socialized medicine program).

So the source did a retraction…a retraction on their reporting of Dr. Hawking’s citizenship. They didn’t talk about the argument that they made and how the facts blew it right out of the water. But are you surprised?

Just a bit more of Krugman He points out that the more that Republican/conservative economic policy is followed, the more “gilded” our society becomes (separation between the rich and poor).

Back to health care reform:
Nate Silver is a bit pessimistic , though he thinks that we might still get a bill.

It looks as if President Obama is willing to go to the mat for this.

Howard Dean is drawing a line in the sand and saying that Democrats who oppose a good health care bill might face primaries.

How to deal with Republican Trolls

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