The Habit Rabbit Hole

Motivation & Movement: The Dopamine Connection

Motivation is tied into the neurochemistry of movement. Whether we move or want to move will depend upon dopamine.

A Double-Edged Dopamine Blade

Dopamine scheduling will make sure you are in control rather than being led around by it.

Dopamine Fundamentals: Precursor to Adrenalin

The substrate of which adrenaline is made. The brain is where epinephrine is made. Epinephrine allows us to get into action. Dopamine was initially only seen as the building block for it.

The Reward Pathway: An Accelerator & A Brake

Important for your desire to get into action. The ventral tegmental area contains neurons that spit out dopamine on the nucleus accumbens. They form the core machinery of the reward pathway. The brake on dopamine is the prefrontal cortex, which stops us being purely pleasure seeking.

Motivation= Pleasure Plus Pain

When doing nothing, the reward pathway fires at a low level. If suddenly you get excited in an anticipatory way, release goes up 30-40 times. Wanting and craving a particular thing. Dopamine doesn’t care what you’re craving.

The Dopamine Staircase: Food, Sex, Nicotine, Cocaine, Amphetamine

Sex makes it go up by about 100%, nicotine increases very quickly by about 150% above baseline. Cocaine and amphetamines by about 1000%. Just thinking about food, sex, and drugs can make it go up by almost to the same degree as the drug. Enough to get them on the motivation track.

Social Media and Video Games

High update and novelty speeds release about as much dopamine as cocaine. Social media levels taper and yet we still get addicted.

Intermittent Halting of Celebration; Enjoy Your Wins, But Not All of Them

To remain on a path to a goal while still being rewarded by dopamine is to remove reward responses intermittently. Reduce the impact of the reward. Don’t celebrate too intensely to keep dopamine in check. Celebrate your wins but not all of them.

You can make somebody else responsible for designating the reward at their discretion.

Protocol 1: Record Your Daily Waking Time & Temperature Minimum

Put phone on airplane mode if it is in the room. Knowing your average wake up time informs your temperature minimum. Two hours before typical wake up time.

Protocol 2: Self-Generate Forward Motion (Outdoors)

Take a walk. Visual images pass by (optic flow) as well as auditory flow, which has an effect of reducing neural activity in the amygdala, reducing levels of anxiety. It serves to push your neurology to be alert but not anxious.

Protocol 3: View Natural Light For 10-30min Every Morning

Get sunlight in the eye to promote metabolic wellbeing and mental health. Early in the day we receive a natural pulse of cortisol. It is important that it happens early in the day. The indirect light exposure will help to trigger it. The same mechanisms tend to apply in animals too. You can kill your goldfish by keeping lights on 24 hours a day.

What To Do If You Can’t View the Sun: Blue Light

You can use a light pad or a drawing pad to make yourself more alert. Blue light is the optimal light to cue this alertness. Just don’t view bright light at night.

Eliminating certain wavelengths of light is not natural.

Protocol 4: Hydrate Correctly

Drink room temperature water first thing with sea salt in it.

Protocol 5: Delay Caffeine 90-120m After Waking

The buildup of adenosine accumulates over the day. Caffeine antagonizes it. Delay it so you don’t have a late afternoon crash when it stops binding to receptors.

Protocol 6: Fast (or Fat-Fast) Until Noon

Increases levels of adrenaline, increasing focus and encoding ability. Drinking yerba mate should be fine.

What Actually Breaks a Fast & What Doesn’t?

Depends on your insulin sensitivity and eating history. However, anything that has calories is going to contribute.

Fat Loss & Glucagon-Like Peptide 1 (GLP1), Yerba Mate, Guayusa Tea

Yerba mate increases GLP1, increasing lipolysis. Keep the leaves and use it again. GLP1 substance release goes up with repeat use of the leaves.

Protocol 7: Optimize Deep Work: Visual Elevation, Ultradian Cycles, White Noise

When eyes are directed upward it creates a sense of alertness. Optimize your workstation so that the computer is at least eye level. Looking down will increase levels of sleepiness. Body posture in relation to eye position will dictate levels of alertness.

90-minute ultradian cycles of working allow you to focus heavily on something before the brain gets exhausted. You have a direct neural connection from your bladder to your brainstem that increase alertness. If we are focused on something all the peripheral stuff fades away. Turn the phone off or put it in another room.

Low level white noise at a low volume puts the brain at a state that is optimal for learning and workflow. There is also dopamine release.

Optimal Time of Day to Do Hard Mental Work

Your best work will usually be 4-6 hours after your temperature minimum. Your temperature rise will trigger the initial cortisol release which is used as fuel for the increase in temperature. Catch the portion of the steepest slope with that temperature rise.

Protocol 8: Optimal Exercise; 3:2 Ratio

Optimal for longevity of the brain. Strength:Endurance (3:2). After a 12 week cycle you can swap the ratio over. Keep workouts short (less than an hour). You want to exercise at least 5 times per week.

Movement is crucial for effective blood flow to the muscles, hormonal release, brain metabolism, etc.

Approximately 80% of resistance training should not go to failure. 80% of endurance work should not include the “burn.” Pushing the lactate threshold is okay for 20% of the time.

Tools for Training & Mental Focus: Fasting, Salt, Stimulants, Alpha-GPC

Training fasted has immediate and long-term benefits. It can help cellular and liver health, as well as improving fat loss.

Low blood sugar can give a sense of focus. Most people are actually low in electrolytes (sodium, potassium, magnesium malate).

Stimulants before exercise can increase dopamine and epinephrine, etc. However, we shouldn’t rely on it. For focus we can use alpha-GPC.

Protocol 9: Eat for Brain Function & Mood

If you eat a large volume of anything, a lot of blood flow will go to the gut, and you may feel lethargic. Lower carbohydrates for lunch, with some form of protein. Dinner can have starches and more of other carbs because they tend to increase serotonin and sedation.

Ingesting sufficient EPA fatty acids can alleviate symptoms of depression.

Protocol 10: Get Your Testosterone & Estrogen in an Ideal Range

Manufactured from cholesterol.

Testosterone and estrogen levels are necessary for optimal brain function. Sleep well, eat, well, lower stress, etc.

Testosterone can exert its functions as free testosterone. Sex hormone binding globulin binds it preventing it from being free so it can travel to the brain. Tongat ali can increase free testosterone levels.

Fadogia agrestis can increase luteinizing hormone levels, and thereby test and estrogen.

Post prandial meals can improve nutrient utilization. Also, providing optic flow, and light cues to influence the circadian rhythm.

Protocol 11: Reset the Mind & Body, Enhance Neuroplasticity, Reveri.com

NSDR encompasses protocols that support better brain and body function. Deliberate and directed shift in one’s state toward a state of deeper relaxation. Yoga nidra is useful.

Relaxation, focus, and plasticity have been shown to be improved with hypnosis. Reveri.com

Hypnosis has been shown to activate the insula which can enhance our sense of interoception. Increasing areas for deep relaxation, focus, and self-awareness simultaneously.

Protocol 12: Hydrate Correctly, Nap Rules

Hydrate and nap. Naps should be 90 minutes or less. 20 minutes is fine.

Protocol 13: View Late Afternoon/Evening Light to Support Sleep & Dopamine

View light in the afternoon. Our retinas become very sensitive between 10pm-4am. Viewing light this late may mess with your learning and memory. Getting light in the afternoon (5-30 minutes) provides enough of a cue to safeguard you from some of the late-night light viewing. Your retina becomes less sensitive and the melatonin rhythm stays appropriate.

Protocol 14: Eat Dinner That Promotes Serotonin, Calm Sleep

More starches and other carbohydrates. Along with protein that has tryptophan. If you do physical training, you’ll need to replenish your glucose stores too. Many people on low-carbohydrate diets struggle with sleep. Supplementing with serotonin can cause trouble with sleep cycles.

Protocol 15: Optimize Falling & Staying Asleep; Tools & Supplements That Work

The drop in temperature at night is a trigger to fall asleep. You can use a hot bath or shower to facilitate this. Your body will cool itself off allowing a temperature drop.

There will be a growth hormone release from a sauna for 20 minutes. Longer bouts of GH you would want to get out, dry and cool off for 10 minutes, then jump back in. Good for muscle and cell growth as well as fat metabolism.

Keeping the room dark is beneficial. So is keeping it cool. Throughout the night you will put your hands or feet out to cool down. If you are in a room that is too warm it will be too difficult and your sleep quality will suffer.

Apigenin (in chamomile), theanine (can increase GABA and chloride channels), magnesium threonate – 300mg (can cross BBB and promote GABA release). These 3 can cause a synergistic effect.

Protocol 16: Preventing Middle of the Night Waking

Light inhibits melatonin, so try not to get too much light exposure. If you wake up late at night, try not to look at light. If you can’t sleep do a yoga nidra session.

Protocol 17: Weekends, Recovering from a Poor Night’s Sleep

Weekend drift, from an altered weekend schedule is fine, but still try to get sleep and managed sunlight daily. If you stay up late it is still better to get up at the same time. The next day don’t go to bed earlier than normal either.

Protocol 1: Fermented Foods, Not Fiber, to Reduce Inflammation

Individuals with a high fiber diet actually had lower biodiversity in the gut microbiome. Those who ate fermented foods had more biodiversity. Fiber is necessary but not sufficient.

Brain-Body: A Mechanical & Chemical Dialogue

The vagus nerve is a vast, enormous bunch of nerves. They leave the brain stem, which send information to your bodily organs to control them (how fast your heart is beating, how fast you’re breathing, how fast digestion is occurring, whether you should secrete killer cells from the spleen). Efferent.

They also send information back up to the brain too. Afferent.

Mechanical sensing (pressure, lack of it) and chemical sensing (acidic/not acidic gut, pathogens, oxygen/CO2). We have these senses everywhere in our body except for the brain. It has no sensation of its own. Headaches are due to receptors on the outside of the brain.

If your gut microbiome, acidity, happy spleen, healthy lungs, etc., your brain will function better.

LDB (Lung-Diaphragm-Brain) Dialogue

The diaphragm is actually skeletal muscle and you can take conscious control of it. How you breathe is also determined by intercostals.

Protocols 2, 3, 4: Control Heart Rate with Breathing

When you inhale, the alveoli fill up, lungs expand, thoracic cavity takes up space, diaphragm moves down, the heart has more space and gets physically bigger, slower flow of blood because of larger heart volume, the sinoatrial node senses this information, sends it to the brain, the brain sends a signal to speed the heart up. Inhale deeply with a short exhale to make yourself feel more alert, secreting lots of adrenaline.

When exhaling, diaphragm moves up, heart has less space, volume of blood gets smaller, the SA sends info via the vagus nerve, the brain sends back a message to slow the heart rate down. If you want to be calmer, emphasize exhales. A physiological sigh can be used.

Box breathing.

Sensing Lung Pressure: Piezo Receptors

Piezo receptors line many tissues to inform the brain about pressure. The lungs have piezo 2 receptors that react to the filling of the lungs, which can send the pressure change sensation to the brain.

Carbon Dioxide, From Air to Blood

We also have a collection of neurons in the brain that register when CO2 levels are too high in the bloodstream, triggering the gasp reflex.

Protocol 5: Alert While Calm

Sit, breathe in deep, passively let air “fall out”, essentially blowing off the CO2. 2:1 ratio. Increasing levels of adrenaline. Then after 25-30 exhale all air and hold your breath. Blowing off a lot of the CO2 has changed the chemistry of the blood, no longer triggering the neurons to elicit the gasp reflex. You should feel very alert, but very calm. Good if you usually feel jittery with coffee or don’t want to have a cold shower.

Baroreceptors: Hering-Breuer Reflex

The Hering-Breuer Reflex – when the lung is inflated, your desire to breathe is reduced.

Gut Volume & The Desire to Open Your Mouth

We are but a series of tubes. We have gut tubes, ventricles, vascular systems, etc. The digestive system communicates to the brain about the mechanical and chemical status of the tube, so that the brain can control it appropriately.

Pressure receptors in your gut, some are piezo receptors, communicate to the areas of your brain for feeding to say don’t eat anymore. Shutting down the neurons of desire to eat. When these receptors signal to the brain that the gut is empty, it drives the desire to take action for eating. Driving fixed action patterns for eating.

Protocol 6: Enhancing Gut-To-Brain Communication, Fasting

You can get better at registering a sense of fullness. Take 10-20s to sense the neurons in your gut to detect how full you are. Take conscious awareness to develop a sense of how full you are. This can teach you to override the piezo receptor pressure.

Having a period of fasting can be beneficial for triggering autophagy. Although, some people struggle because of the desperation to eat when the gut is deflated.

Intestines, Fatty Acids, Amino Acids & Sugar

GLP1R neurons in your neck send axons into the intestines to sense stretch. They then send up the neck into the brain to trigger to inhibit eating.

GPR65 neurons do the same thing as to whether there are certain nutrients in the digestive tract.

More neurons that sense for omega 3 fatty acids, amino acids, and sugars – making you want to eat more. They have nothing to do with taste here.

Protocol 7: Reducing Sugar Cravings with Specific Amino Acid Nutrients

For extreme sugar cravings, replace sugar with amino acids and fatty acids. Take a sip or two of glutamine to soothe cravings.

Gut Acidity (Is Good)

Bacteria thrive in alkaline conditions. You want your gut to be acidic. Antacids cause the sphincters above the gut to shut.

Making your gut more acidic can ameliorate acid reflux. Gastric juices are powerful modulators of brain state.

Improving Nasal Microbiome

We have microbiota on all our mucosal tissues. How acid or alkaline the tissue is will determine what type of microbiota live there.

Breathing nasally improves the nasal microbiome, making it better at fighting infections. You create an additional layer of immune defense. Mouth breathing is effectively lowering your defense.

Inflammation & Microbiome: Fiber vs. Fermented

You want your stomach to be more acidic. With a healthier microbiome you decrease inflammatory cytokines within the body and brain. The pro-inflammatory TNF-alpha or IL-6 are not at high levels.

High fiber diet vs. adding fermented foods to a normal diet. The study looked at the proteome (like a genome of proteins made in the body) with fecal samples and blood draw. They then returned them to their normal diet afterwards. Fermented food diet high outperformed the high fiber diet in lowering inflammatory markers and improving immune function. Some people who ate the high fiber diet had better carbohydrate digestion afterwards, but not everybody did well on it. How well you do on certain diets may well be determined by your food eating history.

Protocol 8: Reducing Inflammation & Enhancing Brain Function w/Fermented Foods

We should all be eating 2-3 servings of fermented foods daily. When the correct gut microbiota is present inflammation markers go down, autoimmune markers go down, cognition improves, sleep improves, autism spectrum symptoms get better, IBS improves, etc. Fermented foods help to improve acidity levels as well as provide pre and probiotics.

Leaking Guts, Auto-Immune Function & Glutamine

Your gut has tight junctions that form a barrier that only molecules of a certain size can get through. In leaky gut, these junctions can’t work at a certain pH and you create holes. Some foods leak through the gut into the bloodstream. Antibodies react to proteins that get through and people start to get food allergies and autoimmune conditions.

Ingesting glutamine can help alleviate leaky gut.

Gut Acidity: HCl (hydrochloric acid), Pepsin

Some people with food allergies or autoimmune disorders have been taking HCl to try to improve digestion during meals. Usually combined with the enzyme pepsin.

Probiotics & Brain Fog

People who supplement with a lot of probiotics may get brain fog, from putting too much of one strand in and lowering biodiversity. Just ingest fermented foods.

Conditions like sarcopenia have been shown to have reduced symptoms with a healthy microbiota.

Nausea: Happens in Your Brain; Area Postrema

Your BBB is like the gut lining, as it has tight junctions that only certain molecules can pass through. Because you can’t grow new neurons, you need the BBB.

Some chemicals can sneak through little holes into the brain. Some neurons sit behind the holes to sense the chemistry of the blood. The area postrema (brain stem) sits next to the chemoreceptor trigger zone. When there are pathogens or it is too acidic, these areas trigger motor reflexes in the abdominal wall that make you throw up. These areas respond to blood chemistry and also to things that we think and believe, and even particular memories. This is why when some people viewing somebody else vomiting or heaving makes them want to vomit too. The neurons in the area postrema are very sensitive to prior experience of interactions with negative things.

The neurons are here to keep the system safe. Alcohol at excessive levels in the bloodstream trigger the postrema to cause vomiting.

If you ingest something in lipid form, because cells are surrounded by them, fat can move through and lead to poisonous substances getting stuck.

Protocol 9: Reducing Nausea: Ginger, Peppermint, CBD, etc.

1-3g of ginger reducing ginger. Same with peppermint.

Cannabis and/or CBD change the threshold for firing in the postrema.

Fever: Triggers and Control Knobs: OVLT

Fever directly relates to interoception. Fever is an increase in body temperature triggered by neurons in the brain, which is triggered by toxins, viruses, or bacteria in the bloodstream.

Proteins that are normally not seen in a region and the body tries to cook the “bad” thing.

A set of neurons (circumventricular organs) that sit near the third ventricle, that can detect what’s in the cerebral spinal fluid. Having access to the chemical condition of the body. The organum vasculosum of the lateral terminalis (OVLT) neurons respond to toxins in the bloodstream and release inflammatory cytokines like ILK-1, as well as changes conditions in the body by communicating with the preoptic area – that cranks up the temperature.

Protocol 10: Cooling the Blood Properly

If you increase your body temperature up too much you can kill off neurons. If you put a cold towel or ice pack on the neck or head during fever you will cool the blood going to the brain, triggering the brain (preoptic area) to crack the temperature up in response. Cool the feet, hands, and face instead.

Taking NSAIDs can sometimes be good but in other circumstances because it reduces your fever it will allow pyrogens (pathogen causing high fever) to survive.

Sensing Feelings, Vagus Nerve, Stress

Whenever we hear about the vagus we think of it being relaxing since it is part of the PNS. The reality is it is mostly stimulating. It is not a calming system; it is a communicating system. As well as a motor system.

Stress itself will alter the chemistry of the gut, because of shutting the vagus nerve and quietening the communicating from gut to brain.

Mental Emotions Reflect Bodily Conditions

The vagus nerve is responsible for emotion by pooling or aggregating the conditions of your gut, heart rate, breathing – to send to the brain for emotions.

We tend to think of what bothers us as a cognitive event. However, the brain doesn’t know what to do with that information. All it knows are internal conditions. They give rise to how you feel. Displayed by facial expressions.

Your face, pupil size, tonality, the degree to which you’re smiling or frowning, can give others a signal of your gut and overall health.

Sensing Other People’s Emotions via the Body

When we know somebody well, our heart rate and breathing begins to mimic them. Registering internal states, even at a distance (NOT MIRROR NEURONS).

Protocol 11: Increasing Interoception, Sensing Heartbeat

You can enhance this ability very quickly. When you stop taking in exteroceptive information you can perceive your heartrate better.

Direct your awareness to your heartbeat. By practicing this, you can strengthen the vagal connections between body and brain. You can also develop the ability to detect when you are not feeling good about something earlier. Or when you feel really good about a person or situation.

Tuning one’s interoception is easy and extremely beneficial for engaging with others, focusing, and responding to your current chemical and mechanical conditions.

DOPA & SERO + TIME PERCEPTION

Introduction & Tool 1 to Induce Lasting Dopamine

Cold water exposure leads to high levels of norepinephrine and dopamine. Sitting in cold water progressively increased dopamine levels up to 250% and it was sustained afterwards.

What Dopamine (Really) Does

We you experience something or crave something really desirable, afterwards your baseline level drops. This is tonic (low level) and phasic (peaks above baseline).

Neurotransmitters mediate local communication between nerve cells and neuromodulators influence the communication of many neurons. Dopamine release can change the probability that certain neural circuits are active and others inactive.

It is responsible for motivation, drive, and time keeping. It is also important for movement. In Parkinson’s and Lewy bodies dementia, there is a depletion of dopamine, leading to shaky movements, loss of movement, and drops in affect.

Two Main Neural Circuits for Dopamine

Ventral tegmentum (ventral part of floor) to ventral striatum and the PFC (mesocorticolimbic pathway). This is the pathway where dopamine influences motivation, drive, and craving. This is the pathway that gets affected during addiction. The classic reward pathway.

The substantia nigra connects to the dorsal striatum (nigrostriatal pathway). Movement pathway.

How Dopamine Is Released: Locally and Broadly

Dopamine can be released from a synapse to bind locally, and also dumped in a broad volumetric release to affect many neurons.

Many drugs and supplements that increase dopamine will make it harder to sustain dopamine release over time as well as lowering your peaks. Volumetric release and local release at the same time makes the difference between peak and baseline smaller. How pleasurable or exciting something is, doesn’t just depend on the height of the peak, it also depends on the peak relative to the baseline.

Fast and Slow Effects of Dopamine

Dopamine works through g-protein coupled receptors, which is much slower than ionotropic receptors. However, they can have roader effects and gene transcription.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-021-00455-7

Dopamine Neurons Co-Release Glutamate

Neurons that release dopamine, co-release glutamate, stimulating action. Dopamine tends to stimulate sympathetic arousal and alertness. Pursuing and craving things outside of yourself.

Your Dopamine History Really Matters

Your experience of life and level of motivation and drive depends on how much dopamine you have relative to your recent experience.

If you scroll social media and you see something you really like, dopamine hit. Then you get to something else and it might be “meh.” When it may have been more interesting if you had of seen it first.

Parkinson’s & Drugs That Kill Dopamine Neurons. My Dopamine Experience

What MPTP does is it kills the dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra and mesocorticolimbic pathway. This leads to a locked in syndrome.

He got giardia and the doctors injected thorazine (an antipsychotic), which blocked his dopamine receptors making him feel uncontrollably miserable.

Tool 3 Controlling Dopamine Peaks & Baselines

Some people are more mellow and others are more excitable and motivated. Epinephrine tends to wake up neural circuits and “hangs out” with dopamine. L-dopa->Dopamine->Epinephrine (adrenaline)->Norepinephrine (noradrenaline). Dopamine colors the subjective experience of an activity to make it more pleasurable. Epinephrine is more about energy. Alone, it can be fear, paralysis, and trauma. With dopamine, it can be excitement.

Chocolate, Sex (Pursuit & Behavior), Nicotine, Cocaine, Amphetamine, Exercise

What you eat or do will affect your dopamine levels transiently. Chocolate will increase base dopamine 1.5 times. The pursuit of sex and the act increase it 2 times. Nicotine that is smoked will increase 2.5 times above baseline (very short lived). Cocaine will increase 2.5 times. Amphetamine – 10 times. Exercise will have different increases depending on how much you like it – typically 2 times.

Tool 4 Caffeine Increases Dopamine Receptors

Will increase dopamine a little. Regular ingestion increases upregulation of certain dopamine receptors (D2 and D3). Meaning you’ll be able to experience more of dopamine’s effects. Layering lots of dopamine releasing activities can cause big problems to your motivation.

Pursuit, Excitement & Your “Dopamine Setpoint”

We need to pursue food, social acceptance/interaction, and sex to survive. Dopamine is a driver for these requirements as well as others. The going out into the wild and foraging part was driven by dopamine. The release after acquiring food drops so that you can pursue more. The more excited you are after something the bigger the drop will be. It always takes a while to get back to our baseline. Also, the more you keep doing the same thing to bring excitement, the less exciting it will be over time.

Your Pleasure-Pain Balance & Defining “Pain”

When we seek something we like, there’s some pleasure, but then there is a bit of pain that drives us to want more. Pain comes from the lack of dopamine that follows.

When released from synaptic vesicles (the readily releasable pool), dopamine will not be in high enough quantities after it has been taken back up.

Addiction, Dopamine Depletion, & Replenishing Dopamine

When somebody pursues a drug that boosts their dopamine, it drops well below baseline. They make the mistake of pursuing it again to get the peak again but it doesn’t feel as good. Eventually the dopamine hit only takes away some pain.

Dopamine is evoked by many activities but there is only the one currency. So, people can feel burnt out after a while of “working hard and playing hard.” The subtle change won’t be noticed until they can’t get pleasure from anything.

If we experience a drop in dopamine baseline (feeling depressed or inattentive), we should do a 30 day fast from the activities that are dopaminergic seeking behaviors.

Tool 5 Ensure Your Best (Healthy) Dopamine Release

Intermittent and random release of dopamine. Don’t expect or try to seek high dopamine levels. The internet, casinos, and social media are constantly preying on your evolutionary desire to keep pursuing. An intermittent reward schedule will keep your dopamine levels relatively stable.

By layering on too many dopamine releasing activities to get your “best experience,” such as taking a pre-workout drink before exercising, training with a friend, while listening to your favorite music, and then eating a high dopamine meal afterwards – you’ll make this activity heavily conditional. Sometimes you should just do the exercise instead of layering everything else on. Vary your reward. Your ability to experience motivation and pleasure for what comes next is affected by how you felt last time.

Maybe flip a coin to work out your conditions.

Smart Phones: How They Alter Our Dopamine Circuits

Not only are we distracted when we use our phones, we are also lowering our baseline levels of dopamine by constantly scrolling (slot machine effect). Achieving a massive dopamine increase on the phone makes doing normal things boring and unfulfilling.

Stimulants & Spiking Dopamine: Counterproductive for Work, Exercise & Attention

A lot of energy drinks and pre-workouts have precursors to dopamine, which may undercut your motivation and progress.

Intermittent spiking of dopamine is the way to go, so you don’t chronically drop them.

Caffeine Sources Matter: Yerba Mate & Dopamine Neuron Protection

Yerba mate contains caffeine, GLP1, anti-oxidants, and is also neuroprotective to dopamine neurons in the movement and motivation pathway.

Caffeine & Neurotoxicity of MDMA

Caffeine has been shown to increase the efficacy of dopamine receptors, which can lead to neurotoxicity of MDMA when combined.

Amphetamine, Cocaine & Detrimental Rewiring of Dopamine Circuits

Ingesting amphetamine and cocaine limits plasticity and learning. Can put it into a state where it can’t learn or modify itself to get better for a long time.

Ritalin, Adderall, (Ar)Modafinil: ADHD versus non-Prescription Uses

The use of these substances to improve dopamine levels may lead to similar effects of amphetamines.

Tool 6 Stimulating Long-Lasting Increases in Baseline Dopamine

Cold water exposure for boosting the immune system, increasing dopamine baseline and releasing epinephrine quickly. The levels of epinephrine will depend on how familiar to the exposure you are. Dopamine reaches 2.5 times above baseline with a sustained period of exposure (1 hour).

There was a release of cortisol but it was transient. Calm yourself by widening your gaze. Or lean into the friction to release more epinephrine. Dopamine release will be triggered regardless.

Most people report a heightened level of calm after getting out. Once you are cold water adapted, you will no longer evoke this dopamine release.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004210050065

Tool 7 Tuning Your Dopamine for Ongoing Motivation

Because of the way dopamine relates to our perception of time, working hard for the sake of a reward after can make hard work more challenging and less likely to want to do hard work again.

Intrinsic vs. extrinsic reward. Children rewarded for drawing made them less likely to do it on their own. If you get a peak, it will lower your baseline and your cognitive interpretation will be that you did it for a reward.

When we engage in an activity for the sake of reward, we extend the time of expectation. This leads to dissociation of the task from the reward at the end, resulting in less dopamine release for the task itself.

Growth mindset – striving is the end goal. Learn to access rewards from doing and being. Find reward in friction. Don’t focus on the end goal unless you want the activity to be more painful.

Don’t layer in more sources of dopamine. Embrace the pain and effort. Tell yourself the effort is the good part. Then it becomes reflexive for all types of effort. You are doing it by choice and you enjoy it. You want it to get better.

Tool 8 Intermittent Fasting: Effects on Dopamine

When we eat, we get a dopamine release, especially after a deprivation state. This is what happens to a lot of people who intermittently fast. Attaching dopamine release to the deprivation and getting more focus and a clear mind.

Knowledge of knowledge (benefits of fasting or studying) can help shape the circuits for reward.

Validation of Your Pre-Existing Beliefs Increases Dopamine

Hearing something that reinforces someone’s prior beliefs can lead to dopamine release.

Tool 9 Quitting Sugar & Highly Palatable Foods: 48 Hours

If you ingest something you like, then eat something sweet or savory, then eat the original food again, it won’t taste as good. Just go 2 days without overly palatable foods.

Pornography

The intensity of pornography can negatively shape real life interactions.

Wellbutrin & Depression & Anxiety

Wellbutrin increases dopamine and epinephrine. It seems to avoid sexual side effects usually found with SSRIs. Although, it can increase anxiety.

Tool 10 Mucuna Pruriens, Prolactin, Sperm, Crash Warning

Mucuna pruriens is pretty much L-DOPA. It can decrease prolactin, improve sperm concentration and quality. However, any dopamine increasing products will result in a dopamine crash afterwards.

Tool 11 L-Tyrosine: Dosages, Duration of Effects & Specificity

L-tyrosine is an amino acid precursor to dopamine. 500-1000mg. Can increase levels within 45 minutes and then drop about 30 minutes later.

Tool 12 Avoiding Melatonin Supplementation, & Avoiding Light 10pm-4am

Melatonin can impact the dopamine pathway 60 minutes after administration.

Tool 13 Phenylethylamine (with Alpha-GPC) For Dopamine Focus/Energy

PEA can increase synaptic levels of dopamine and is found in chocolate. A sharp increase for 30-45 minutes.

Tool 14 Huperzine A

Can increase acetylcholine production and increases of dopamine in the hippocampus and PFC.

Social Connections, Oxytocin & Dopamine Release

Oxytocin and social connection can directly stimulate the dopaminergic pathway (ventral tegmental area). Seeking social connections are important. This is why we have motivation to seek social interactions.

Direct & Indirect Effects: e.g., Maca; Synthesis & Application

Gut microbiome, maca root (reduce cortisol and indirectly increase dopamine), etc., indirectly increase dopamine.

Introducing Time Perception, Note on Fasting & Supplements

Supplements breaking a fast will be contextual depending on glucose content and personal glucose responsiveness. Fish oil, athletic greens, and other low-no glucose containing supplements should be fine.

Entrainment, Circannual Entrainment, Melatonin

Entrainment is the way in which your internal processes, biology, or psychology are linked to a certain thing, such as circadian rhythms.

Light inhibits melatonin release, which is responsible for making you sleepy and regulating testosterone and estrogen. If you flick on a light at night, your melatonin levels will crash. Day length varies around the world and seasons. When days are short, melatonin levels are higher.

For a given 8-hour day in spring, melatonin levels are getting less and less, meaning the person feels more energetic. The melatonin signal is the way in which your internal state (mood, sense of energy, appetite) is entrained/matched to the rotation of the Earth around the sun.

Seasonal Oscillations in Testosterone & Estrogen, Tool 1

In longer days, people tend to release more testosterone and estrogen. Correlated with desire to seek romantic partners and interactions, aggression, and mood.

2 hours of light exposure to the skin resulted in significant increases in testosterone and estrogen. We are entrained and matched to the external dark/light cycle and as the day length changes, so do our hormones.

Our perception of time is both conscious and oscillatory (relating to daylight, hormones, and neuromodulators).

Circadian Timing, Tools 1, 2, 3 (for Circadian Entrainment)

Every cell has a 24-hour timer where a gene is expressed (inhibited) when there is very little of a specific protein around, leading to DNA making the RNA, translating it into a protein, this protein goes way up, then the gene is shut off. When that protein’s levels go down, the gene gets expressed again. This happens on a 24-hour cycle for certain proteins in all cells. Light and a lack of light entrain the cell timing to ensure this happens at the right time. If the cells aren’t linked to the sunlight, this can result in dysfunction.

View 10-30 minutes of sunlight upon waking, do it again in the afternoon, artificial lights are okay during the daytime, in the evening turn them off. Try not to wear sunglasses, normal eyeglasses are fine. The light viewing you do or the avoidance of it at night sets your fundamental layer of time perception.

Tool 4: Timing Physical Activity; Tool 5: Timing Eating Window

Engage in physical activity in fairly regular times of the day. It doesn’t need to be every day, but try to keep your timing consistent (+ or – 2 hours).

Eat at fairly regular times or within a certain window of time.

When Circadian Entrainment is Disrupted, Time Perception Suffers

People underestimate how long they’ve been somewhere without the cue of clocks, artificial light or sunlight. Even the perception of shorter time scales (2 minutes) was disrupted when their circadian clocks were disrupted. You want your entrainment to be really locked in for decent time perception.

Tool 6: Ultradian (90min) Cycles & Focus

Our daily and nighttime rhythms are broken up into ultradian rhythms. During learning periods, we have a 90-minute time block before our attention and focus tends to drop off. We are entrained to the release of particular neurochemicals, such as acetylcholine and dopamine, that allow your brain to focus (basic rest-activity cycle). After 90 minutes these neurons are far less likely to engage in releasing these chemicals.

You can initiate one of these cycles whenever you want. Meaning you can set a work schedule. It is suggested not to do more than 3 of these per day, spaced out 2-4 hours. Except for your sleep cycles.

Our Sense of the Passage of Time: Present, Prospective, Retrospective

Perception of the passage of time in the present (frame rate/interval timing).

Prospective timing is like a stop watch measuring things as they go forward.

Retrospective time is how you measured time from the past.

It all boils down to dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin.

Dopamine (& Nor/epinephrine) Lead to Time Overestimation; Frame Rate

The more dopamine released, the more we tend to overestimate how much time has passed – feeling like time has gone much faster. Noradrenaline/norepinephrine too.

They cause fine slicing of your time bins, like increasing the frame rate of your camera.

Serotonin & Time Underestimation; Decreased Frame Rate

When serotonin is released, people tend to underestimate the amount of time that has passed. They’ve also tested this with cannabis, which increases serotonin and the cannabinoid receptor activation. Slower frame rates.

Dopamine vs. Serotonin Across the Day; Tool 7: When to Do Rigid vs. Creative Work

During the first half of the day, dopamine and norepinephrine is elevated in the brain, body, and bloodstream. The second half has more serotonin. Meaning our perception of the passage of time will be very different in the early part of the day compared to the evening.

Do the hardest or most important task in the morning. Less about sensing accomplishment and more about being more cognitively primed to perform better.

Activities that involve more creative thinking and blending of different aspects of memory, task utilization, and brainstorming would be better suited for the more serotonergic evening.

Example of Tool 7

Work that adheres to rigid rules, such as math, a recipe, execution of musical scales, physical skills, or accounting, essentially anything that requires precision should be done early on in the day. The afternoon should be anything that can be creative, where this is no right or wrong answer.

How Sleep Deprivation Degrades Performance

Sleep disruption dysregulates time perception, making it hard to concentrate.

Trauma, “Over-clocking” & Memories; Adjusting Rates of Experience

Many people who have been through traumatic experiences overclock, where levels of dopamine and norepinephrine go up so much during a particular event that everything feels slow motion.

The memory system is basically a space-time recorder, creating a record of what is happening. Particular neurons firing at specific rates get recorded, measuring the space code and rate code/relative firing/timing. Meaning you can take certain memories and stamp them with different firing rates and timing to prevent having to store a whole new memory. Overclocking is where the frame rate is so high that the memory gets stamped down, and people have a hard time shaking that memory and the emotions associated with it.

Dealing with this trauma requires dealing with the emotion and also changing the rate of the experience of the memory by deliberately speeding up or slowing down the memory. Trying to allow the person to take control of the rate of that memory. Allowing an uncoupling of the emotional weight. Turning a scream into a mumble.

Dopamine, Spontaneous Blinking & Time Perception; Tool 8

Time dilates after spontaneous blinking. Increases in dopamine are associated with increases in spontaneous blink rate. So, the more aroused we are, the higher the blink rate, and an overestimation of time.

Deliberate Cold Exposure, Dopamine, Tool 9: Adjusting Frame Rate in Discomfort

Cold exposure can increase baselines of dopamine dramatically, also changing your perception of time, making it feel slow motion.

Fun “Feels Fast” BUT Is Remembered as Slow; Boring Stuff “Feels Slow,” Recall as Fast

This seems to be an efficiency in the brain for storing memories. When people are isolated, time dilates. Timers also vary on our level of excitement. Dopaminergic fine slices and serotonergic blocks.

Retrospective Time, Context Variation & Enhanced Bonding with Places & People

The more novel experiences we have in a place, the longer we feel we’ve been there. This is also true for social interactions. When we move to multiple novel environments with somebody else, we tend to feel like we know them better. The context and experiences will contribute but it’s the actual perception of time and the storage of memory based on that slice of time will be logged differently.

Dopamine Release Resets the Start of Each Time Bin on Our Experience

Basketball watching experiment. You can measure surprise based on the release of dopamine in the mesolimbic reward pathway (VTA and nucleus accumbens). When something a subject wanted to see happened dopamine would be released, as well as unexpected/surprising events, even if it is a negative surprise. The frequency of that release will determine the perception of time at those markers. How often you release dopamine will set a new frame rate or phase of memories. Subconsciously carving up your experience.

Habits & Time Perception; Tool 10 (Setting Functional Units of Each Day)

Placing habitual routines throughout your day is a good way to incorporate your dopamine system. Meaning you can create time blocks and setting the frame rate of your day. Habits can invoke dopamine release and create time markers so you can distinguish periods of your day. Then you can break your day into smaller and more functional units.

Synthesis & Book Suggestion (Your Brain Is a Time Machine by D. Buonomano)

Habits versus Reflexes, Learning, Neuroplasticity

Habits mean that our nervous system learns, not necessarily consciously. Learning is neuroplasticity. The process by which our nervous system changes in response to experience.

Goal-Based Habits vs. Identity-Based Habits

Immediate goal-based habits are habits that are designed to bring you a specific outcome when you do them. For example, a zone 2 exercise program for fat loss.

Identity-based habits are where there is a larger over-arching theme to the habit. For example, being a fit person.

How Long It (Really) Takes to Form a Habit; Limbic-Friction

For the same habit to be formed, it can take 18 days all the way up to 254 days for different individuals to form that same habit. The habit this study looked at was going for a post-prandial walk. The habit was considered learned when they were doing it 85% of the time and not having to spend much mental effort to do it.

Probably has to do with how well people deal with limbic friction – the strain that is required in order to overcome anxiousness and feeling too tired or not motivated. Either too calm or too alert. Limbic friction can be used to determine how much activation energy is required to engage in a behavior.

Linchpin Habits

Certain habits that make other habits easier to execute. Usually things you enjoy. Placing the linchpin habits earlier bias the likelihood that we will do other habits that are similar or aligned.

Mapping Your Habits; Habit Strength, Context-Dependence

Habit strength is measured by how context dependent it is (do you do the same things the same way when you move through certain environments?) and how much limbic friction is required to execute those habits. How much top down/conscious override is required? Do you need to be really alert or really calm to get into the appropriate state for it?

Knowing these answers will tell you how embedded the habit is in your system.

Automaticity

Neural circuits can perform it automatically.

Tool 1: Applying Procedural Memory Visualizations

With each repetition of a habit, small changes occur in the cognitive and neural mechanisms associated with procedural memory. Getting into the mindset of procedural memory is very important to adopting a new habit. Think through each step in the mind to shift towards a much higher likelihood of doing it.

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033417

Hebbian Learning, NMDA receptors

When particular neurons are coactive. Involves activation of NMDA receptors. When the neuron gets a strong stimulus, this receptor results in triggering more receptors to come to the surface to lower the threshold of firing next time, making them slightly more reflexive.

Tool 2: Task Bracketing; Dorsolateral Striatum

The basal ganglia are involved in action execution and suppression (GO, NO-GO). Some people find it easier to do things than not to. Task bracketing involves neurons within the basal ganglia (dorsolateral striatum) and is important for the establishment of behaviors associated with the habit but not the habit itself. Activated at the beginning and end of the habit, framing the events. This underlies whether a habit will be context dependent or not. If these neurons are robust, it is likely we will go and complete the habit no matter what, e.g., brushing teeth.

When the dorsolateral striatum is engaged, your body and brain are primed to execute a habit.

States of Mind, Not Scheduling Time Predicts Habit Strength

It is a myth that if you’re really specific about when you are going to perform a habit that it will stick. It might be true short term but not long term. Our nervous system generates behaviors based on state, such as what level of activation must take place how much focus we have, how fatigued we are, etc. Not time.

Tool 3: Phase-Based Habit Plan: Phase 1

0-8 hours after waking up. Assuming 7am-10pm waking time, but you can adopt it to your schedule.

Norepinephrine, epinephrine, and dopamine are elevated. Cortisol is also higher as well as body temperature. View sunlight within first 30 minutes, physical exercise of some kind, cold exposure (less clothing, cold bath/shower, ice bath), caffeine ingestion, fasting (lead to more NE and dopa), foods rich in tyrosine, alpha GPC, etc. These will all place your body and brain in a state in which you are better able to engage in activities that require high limbic friction. Your whole system is action and focus oriented.

Take the habits that require the highest limbic friction and put them in this phase of the day. Creating task bracketing so your nervous system will predict when you are going to lean into friction.

Tool 3: Phase-Based Habit Plan: Phase 2

9-14 hours after waking up.

The amount of dopamine, norepinephrine, and cortisol start to come down. Serotonin starts to rise. Lending itself to a more relaxed state of being.

Start tapering the amount of light viewing (artificial light) unless it is sunlight. NSDR (meditation, yoga nidra, self-hypnosis), heat and sauna (induces a higher serotonergic state), ashwagandha, etc.

Take on habits that require little friction. Journaling, practicing music (maybe a challenging piece), language learning, etc. Something you are already doing that doesn’t have much resistance but has a creative/learning component. Bracketing them will make them more likely to be done. Exercise can take place in this portion but maybe do NSDR or some other relaxation protocol afterwards to wind down quickly.

Tool 3: Phase-Based Habit Plan: Phase 3

15-24 hours after waking up.

Facilitating neuroplasticity. Low to no light, room temperature low (body needs to drop 2-3 degrees), well fed enough so you don’t wake hungry but eating no later than 2-4 hours before sleep, magnesium threonate, theanine, apigenin, not drinking caffeine. If you wake up and struggle to get back to sleep, don’t turn lights on, maybe use the reveri app or NSDR protocols.

When you do things at particular phases of the day under particular conditions of neurochemistry, you are giving the brain predictable sets of sequences that during sleep it can better consolidate the information and reduce limbic friction.

Habit Flexibility

Moving a habit around can be beneficial for developing context independence. Meaning it is something that is truly engrained that can be integrated with other sensory maps. No longer needing to be bracketed.

If it doesn’t take much activation energy and you can do it in any context, you have truly formed a habit.

Should We Reward Ourselves? How? When? When NOT to.

Reward prediction error is a way to look at whether to reward ourselves or not. If you expect a reward and it comes, a behavior is more likely to occur again. However, the amount of dopamine reward experienced will be higher if unexpected.

If we expect a reward and it doesn’t come the pattern of dopamine release will follow a different contour. The level of dopamine will drop below baseline.

Tool 4: “Dopamine Spotlighting” & Task Bracketing

If you are trying to build or break a habit it is useful to think about the events that precede or follow the event to cast a spotlight around where dopamine will be released. Positively anticipate the onset and offset of the event, leaning into the effort.

You can’t lie to yourself, as you know when you’re lying. This is why you need to be honest to yourself. Mentally walking through the steps that need to be undertaken and to broaden the time bin, positively anticipating the period heading into the habit and the feeling afterwards. Drawing a larger envelope around the desired habit.

Pick a habit you want to form, write down or think about the sequence of steps involved to execute the habit, and then write down or think about what the sequence of events that need to precede that habit are (10-15 minutes before), as well as the immediate sequence of events/feelings that will occur after that habit, then call the whole thing a habit execution. Then positively associating with the idea that you are going to complete that entire sequence, you will engage reward prediction error in the proper way that the dopamine surge can lend itself towards motivation.

Tool 5: The 21-Day Habit Installation & Testing System

Set out to perform 6 new habits that you would like to do for 21 days. They will fit into specific periods of the day dependent on the Tool 3 exercise. The expectation is that you’ll only complete 4 of them per day. The real objective is the habit of creating habits. You can shuffle habits in and out of those time slots if need be.

If you miss a day, there is no punishment. It’s important that you don’t do habit slip compensation (doing more the next day). Just get right back on the horse. There seems to be a powerful effect in the scientific literature of doing 2-day bins. Doing these habits for 2 days in a row and then mentally resetting, as if you are testing out the ability to actually achieve them.

After 21 days you stop deliberately engaging in this tight schedule and just go on autopilot. Ask yourself how many of those particular habits are automatically incorporated. This means that every 21 days you don’t just try and add new habits. You just maintain the ones that work for you. It will allow you to assess if you actually can make room for more habits after the second round. Install habits first round and test the second round. Once you achieve those 6 habits you can move forward.

Breaking Habits: Long-Term (Synaptic) Depression

Stress reduction, positive routines, etc., will help to eliminate bad habits by proxy but if they are well engrained you may need to actively unlearn them (LTD).

If neuron A and neuron B is active, but at a different time or outside a particular temporal window then long term depression will begin.

To take them out of synchrony you can reward not doing an activity or punish yourself for doing it. Or, you can eliminate judgement altogether and just measure every time you do that behavior (food diary or recording screen time).

Notifications Don’t Work

Effective immediate term but not long term.

Electric shocks or paying out works but not if they are being monitored. The punishment just isn’t bad enough.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1539449219876877?journalCode=otjb

Tool 6: Break Bad Habits with Post-Bad-Habit “Positive Cargo”

You need to take the period immediately afterwards and capture the sequence of events and start integrating a new habit directly after. Engage in another positive behavior and you start to create a double habit. Say, if you picked up your phone, you would go hydrate or do breathwork afterwards. Creating a temporal mismatch (closed loop). Making it easier for you to intervene and rewrite the script of the bad habit. Changing the whole nature of the sequence of neurons, degrading the old habit with conscious awareness once remapping has happened.

Goal Setting

Brain Circuits for Setting & Pursuing Goals

Humans are unique in our ability to orient our mind in terms of immediate goals, moderate term (week -month – year), and very long-term goals (years – decades). We can also have multiple goals at once. However, we need to juggle them appropriately so we don’t interfere with other regions of our life (people who prioritize work over family life for example).

The brains circuits involved in goal-directed behavior:

• The amygdala is involved in goal-directed behavior in the form of avoiding punishments (embarrassment, financial ruin, etc.). Anxiety and fear.
• The ventral striatum is part of the basal ganglia, which has two circuits (GO, NO-GO), for initiating action and preventing action.
• The lateral prefrontal cortex is involved in executive function, planning, thinking about things on different time scales and how our actions today will affect the future. Planning and thinking across different time scales.
• The orbitoprefrontal cortex is involved with meshing emotionality with the current state of progress and comparing to where it might be when closer to a goal. Emotionality in the present and where we will be with our goal.

It doesn’t matter what the goal is, the same circuits are involved.

Determining the Value of Goals

Value information: Is something worth pursuing?

Action: Which action to take and what not to take, given the perceived value of the goal.

Dopamine is the common currency by which we assess our progress towards things of a particular value. How we assess value of our pursuits.

Psychology of Goal Setting: Assessing Value, Action Steps

There seems to be a lot of redundant themes in the psychological literature. Especially in regards to when acronyms are used to popularize and remember ideas better. You sacrifice efficiency and necessity when trying to make them fit to a form that is aesthetically or psychologically pleasing.

• ABC method: Achievable, Believable, Committed.
• SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time Bound.
• SMARTER: SMART, Ethical, and Rewarding.

The reality is, we only need to achieve the following:

• Goal setting: Know what “right” looks like. Have the end in mind.
• Assessment: Knowing if one is making progress.
• Goal Execution: Assessing value and if things are going well and action steps.

Peripersonal Space vs. Extrapersonal Space

Peripersonal is all the space within your body and your immediate environment. We have particular neural circuits and chemicals that are geared towards consumatory behaviors, such as using things and consuming things that are in your peripersonal space. Interoception (perception of internal body) and interacting with the environment to do something like drinking or eating things. Usually governed by the neuromodulator serotonin, and oxytocin to a lesser extent.

Extrapersonal space is everything beyond the confines of your reach. Some other location in space and time. The neuromodulators (mostly dopamine) are distinct from those of peripersonal space.

To be able to achieve our goals (becoming good at goal seeking) we need to be able to toggle between a clear understanding of our peripersonal space (what we have and how we feel in the immediate present) and the ability to understand what is out in the extrapersonal space and improving our ability to move into it.

We evaluate our progress in the peripersonal space (how we feel here and now), even if we haven’t initiated action yet. We need to orient ourselves into the extrapersonal space to actually move towards a goal.

It is a myth that visualization is the best way to achieve any goal. The following is a much better approach.

Visually Focusing on a Goal Line Improves Performance

Multitasking can be effective as it is placed at a particular time within your goal seeking behavior.

Most people can hold their attention for about 3 minutes at a time before switching to something else. Multitasking increases the release of epinephrine. Doing this before jumping into goal directed behavior can help us get into action. We use action to generate adrenaline. Just don’t multitask during the goal directed behavior. We require contracted focus/gaze to increase cognitive attention and focus.

When we focus on an external point (line on a wall), we are engaging in extrapersonal space/goal-seeking mode. When people had to focus on a goal line/finish line, they were more effective at reaching their goals (20% quicker) and with less perceived effort (17% less). Just by changing where somebody looks can elicit changes in the autonomic nervous system.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167219861438

How Vision Improves Performance: Blood Pressure

When our vision is brought to a common point (convergent eye movement), our visual system engages neurons that are involved in fine detail and fine changes over time.

The magnocellular pathway is involved in taking in global information about lots of things happening around us. Relaxation of the nervous system is involved with changes in alertness or attention.

The visual system can change the alertness level by communicating with the circulatory system. Blood pressure increases when we focus on a convergent point. Systolic pressure (when the heart contracts) increases, which creates a systemic increase in fuel utilization and oxygen availability. Adrenaline is also released, making us more likely to lean into our goals. Imagining a goal has to be combined with the physical pursuit of a goal.

When our vision is broad, there is a reduction in goal directed behavior and systolic blood pressure.

Dopamine Reward Prediction Error, Controlling Dopamine

The greatest activation of dopamine is when something is positive and novel. If we anticipate something, there is a release in dopamine during that anticipation but the experience only has a smaller release. If we predicted something and it doesn’t happen, there is a drop in dopamine below baseline (disappointment).

The physiological effects of being forced to do something has opposing health effects to wanting to do something (rats getting fit and healthy running on wheel vs. getting sick and stressed when forced).

Pick a particular interval/milestone at which you will assess progress and make the reward cognitive. An interval that you can maintain consistently.

If we constantly place ourselves into a mode of thinking we are failing, we won’t churn out much dopamine. This is different to the act of picturing the possibility of failure as a motivating factor. Reward yourself cognitively weekly, by telling youself that you are on track based on your metrics. Dopamine itself, provides a state of motivation and readiness for achieving goals, also generating adrenaline for movement and action. A self-amplifying system. If you check yourself weekly you can also set yourself up for positive unexpected rewards, increasing motivation and likeliness of continuing the behavior.

Consistent waves of dopamine to allow consistent improvement. A huge wave will disrupt the system and recovery is needed, reducing the chance of continuing the behavior.

How Dopamine Influences Vision & Vice Versa

For people with normal levels of dopamine, visual circuitry is pretty constrained. However, those that lack dopamine have even less movement with their eyes, not evaluating horizons/extrapersonal space. When dopamine is restored, the visual expansion is enhanced, and goal seeking improved. This is why some people use L-tyrosine or caffeine to increase dopamine levels.

Behavioral tools engage neuroplasticity, whereas supplemental tools don’t. Getting better and better at being motivated and focused.

Behavior>nutrition>supplementation.

Interim Summary of Goal-Pursuit Steps

Set goals that are challenging, yet achievable.

Plan concretely.

Foreshadow failure. Only visualizing success for motivation at the beginning of the journey.

Focus on particular visual points and eliminate distractors.

Tool 1: Learn Fast(er) by the 85% Rule

Making errors for neuroplasticity: the state of frustration cues a greater number of brain areas to be more alert, so that subsequent attempts at learning have higher focus and a greater probability of acquiring the new information/skill. Errors are the entry point for neuroplasticity.

When trying to learn something new, you want to be succeeding about 85% of the time. Don’t make a goal too lofty, as you don’t make progress and end up quitting. Also, don’t make it too easy, as all it does is feed onto your self-esteem without subsequent growth.

While trying to learn, think pretty hard, but not so hard that you’re failing all of your attempts.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12552-4

Tool 2: Use Focal Vision to Initiate Goal Pursuit

If you already know what goal you want to pursue, hold your visual attention to one point and hold it there for 30-60s. You can blink. This places your brain and body into a state of readiness before moving into actions that help you to pursue your goal.

Tool 3: Use Aged Self-Images to Self-Motivate

For long term goals, such as saving money for later in life, viewing an aged picture (at the age of when you will reap the rewards of your goals) makes you more likely to save for retirement. Thinking about the future vs. viewing pictures of ourselves shows that using the visual system, instead of just visualizing, is more powerful at generating behaviors that are conducive towards long-term goal success.

Tool 4: Visualization of Goals is Only Helpful at the Start

It is effective to think of “the win” to get the goal started, but not for continuing/maintaining pursuit. A ramping up of readiness in the beginning.

Tool 5: Visualizing Failure is the Best Ongoing Motivator

Visualizing failure near doubles the probability of success. Picturing what will happen if you don’t get up and work towards your goal. Much more effective than visualizing the win. Foreshadowing failure. The amygdala is a crucial part of goal-seeking neural circuitry and requires this foreshadowing of failure, and the subsequent increase of systolic blood pressure and adrenaline.

Tool 6: Make Goals Moderately Lofty

The probability of achieving a goal depends on whether one sets a goal that is easy, moderate, or impossible. When people set goals that are too easy it doesn’t recruit enough of the ANS to make pursuit likely. Systolic blood pressure doesn’t increase.

If the goal is too lofty, it doesn’t internally process as being likely, and thus does not increase systolic pressure and the associated changes either.

There is a near doubling of systolic blood pressure, and also the likelihood of achieving the goal, if the goal is moderate level (difficult but not so lofty that it crashes your system).

Tool 7: Avoid Goal Distraction; Focus on 1-2 Major Goals Per Year

Limit your options. Trying to pursue too many goals at once is counterproductive. 1-3 major goals per year is plenty.

The greater the number of things in our visual attention, the more we can draw our attention away from our goal. This results in people to buying more stuff in busy looking shops. Reduce distraction in your visual system to increase focus.

Tool 8: Ensure Specificity of Goals, Weekly Assessment

A concrete plan is essential for an achieved outcome. There needs to be action steps otherwise the progress will have little meaning.

Assessment of progress weekly is a good rule of thumb for assessing action goals.

Tool 9: Space-Time Bridging

Move cognition from interoception to exteroception. Space-time bridging is a way of stepping back from peripersonal to extrapersonal and back again, to give flexibility and control.

Preferably during the daytime and outside in nature. Close your eyes, focus your attention (even visual) onto interoceptive cues (heart rate, breathing, sensation), eliminating the external world for about 3 slow breaths. Then open your eyes and focus visual attention on some area of the surface of the body for 3 breaths (palm of hand), while still focusing on the internal state (90:10 – internal:external). Next, move visual attention to something outside the body, moving about 90% of the focus there, while leaving 10% for the cadence of the 3 breaths. Next, look as far away as possible for 3 breaths, almost 99% of attention. Then, expand your vision and attention as broadly as possible for 3 breaths. Finally, return back to purely interoception again. Repeat 2-3 times.

The visual system is about analyzing space and for matching time. Focused attention to a visual a narrow point slices time finely, paying attention to our immediate physiological experience. Focusing outwards, we engage the exteroceptive and dopamine system, and batch time differently. Broader spheres of vision carves our time up into larger slices.

This practice teaches us to use our visual system, cognitive system, and thereby reward system to orient different locations in space and time to improve goal directed behavior. The essence of setting a goal, thinking about what you want, setting intermediate milestones, assessing whether you are reaching those milestones, and correcting if necessary. Make a practice of stepping through these stations every day to teach the different systems related to goal setting to map different time frames.