THE MOLECULE OF MORE by Daniel Z. Lieberman & Michael E. Long
Authors: Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD is a clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at George Washington University. He is an award-winning teacher and has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Michael E. Long is a physicist, award-winning speechwriter, screenwriter, and playwright. He works as a teacher of writing at Georgetown University.
Book: The central thesis of the book is that much of human life has an unconsidered component that explains an array of behaviours previously thought to be unrelated. These behaviours include why winners cheat, why we fall in love, why most diets fail, why we fall into addictions, or why the brains of conservatives and liberals are different. The responsible is dopamine, the neurotransmitter that regulates reward and motivation in the brain. This is the chemical of desire that always asks for more - more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality.
Opinion: I decided to buy this book because it was mentioned several times in the Huberman Lab podcast. In my view, it is less informative than “Dopamine Nation” (see the previous review), but it is still valuable for those interested in neuroscience. I especially enjoyed the first half of the book (love, drugs, domination, and madness). One of the many insights of this part is that passionate love (driven by dopamine) usually lasts no more than ~12 months and that a couple must develop a different type of love to remain attached (companionate love) after that period. The neurological basis of this love is completely different (driven by H&N molecules - i.e., oxytocin, serotonin, vasopressin), and it is the reason why so many couples end up failing. On the negative side, I think that the second half of the book (politics, progress, and harmony) is a bit repetitive and oversimplifies right and left politics to establish a spurious relationship between ideology and neurochemicals.
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