How to Control Your Sense of Pain & Pleasure

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we continue our discussion of the senses, and the senses we are going to discuss are pain and pleasure. Pain and pleasure reflect two opposite ends of a continuum, a continuum that involves detection of things in our skin and the perception, the understanding of what those events are. Our skin is our largest sensory organ and our largest organ indeed. It is much larger than any of the other organs in our body. And it's an odd organ if you think about it. It has so many functions. It acts as a barrier between our organs and the outside world. It harbors neurons, nerve cells, that allow us to detect things like light touch or temperature or pressure of various kinds. And it's an organ that we hang ornaments on. People put earrings in their ears. People decorate their skin with tattoos and inks and other things. And it's an organ that allows us to experience either great pain or great pleasure. So it's a multifaceted organ and it's one that our brain needs to make sense of in a multifaceted way. So today we're going to discuss all that. And most importantly, how you can experience more pleasure and less pain by understanding these pathways. We will also discuss things you can do. And if you wish, things you can take that will allow you to experience more pleasure and less pain in response to a variety of different experiences. Before I go any further, I want to highlight a particularly exciting area of science that relates to the skin and to sensing of pleasure and pain, but has everything to do with motivation. Motivation is something that many people struggle with. Not everybody, but most people experience dips and peaks in their motivation. Even if they really want something, how should we think about these changes in motivation? What do they reflect? Well, at a very basic level, they reflect fluctuations, changes in the levels of a chemical called dopamine. Most of us have heard of dopamine. Dopamine is a neuromodulator, meaning it modulates or changes the way that neurons, nerve cells, work. Most of us have heard that dopamine is the molecule of pleasure. However, that is incorrect. Dopamine is a molecule of motivation and anticipation. To illustrate how dopamine works, I want to highlight some very important work largely carried out by the laboratory of a guy named Wolfram Schultz. The Schultz Laboratory has done dozens of excellent experiments on the dopamine system and have identified something called reward prediction error. Although in some sense, you can think about it as reward prediction variance, changes in the levels of dopamine, depending on whether or not you expect a reward and whether or not you get the reward. So I'm going to make this very simple. Dopamine is released into the brain and body and generally makes us feel activated and motivated and as if we have energy to pursue a goal. And it is released into the brain and body in anticipation of a reward. Measurements of dopamine have been made in animals and humans. And what you find is that when we anticipate a reward, dopamine is released. We will put in the work to achieve that reward. That work could be mental work or physical work. But when the reward arrives, dopamine levels drop back down to baseline. That's right. When we receive a reward, dopamine levels go back down to baseline. So the way to envision this, as you can just imagine a sort of increase in dopamine as we anticipate something, we're working towards it. We're working towards a goal. We're excited about seeing somebody or meeting somebody or receiving some reward. And then the reward comes and dopamine goes down. Now that's all fine and good, but there is a way to get much more dopamine out of that process. And therefore a way to have much more motivation, energy and focus, because those are the consequences of elevated dopamine. The way to do that is to not deliver the reward on an expected schedule. So experiments have been done where there's an anticipation of a reward, there's work, and then the reward only arrives every other or every third bout of work. Okay, so this would be like getting a pat on the head. If you're a dog or a perhaps a child or an adult, or getting a monetary reward only for every third project or every third race that you win, pick any kind of goal. It doesn't matter. These molecules don't care about what you're pursuing. They are a common currency of different types of activities. That's a regular reward schedule, and it will not alter the pattern of dopamine release that I described before. However, if the reward arrives intermittently, almost randomly, so you anticipate a reward as a maybe, it might come, it might come. Then you work, work, work, work, work, no reward. You repeat the work, work, work, work, work, work, and then you get a reward. So some trials you do, some trials you don't, and it's completely random. Under those conditions, the amplitude, the amount of dopamine that's released into your system and the motivation to continue working hard or playing whatever kind of game you're playing doubles or triples. And this is the basis of things like slot machines and gambling. And this is why so many people will give so much of their money up to casinos and the casinos always win. Sometimes people walk away with more money than they came to the casino with, but the vast majority of the time, the house wins as they say. And it's because they understand intermittent reward schedules and you can apply this to stay motivated in your own pursuits. Rather than thinking about the pleasure of a reward, understand that dopamine is released in response to anticipation of a reward. And that is the fuel for work. And every once in a while at random, remove the reward. That's the way to continue to stay motivated, not to reward every action or every goal. And this is also true if you're trying to train up children or train up players on a team, you should not celebrate every win. I know that's a little counterintuitive. We're going to go more into the biology of dopamine and how it relates to the pleasure system later on in the podcast. But for now, understand intermittent reward schedules, harness the biology of dopamine in ways that can allow you essentially infinite motivation over time. Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is an all-in-one vitamin mineral probiotic drink. I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking Athletic Greens and the reason I still take Athletic Greens once or twice a day is that it helps me cover all of my basic nutritional needs. It makes up for any deficiencies that I might have. In addition, it has probiotics, which are vital for microbiome health. I've done a couple of episodes now on the so-called gut microbiome and the ways in which the microbiome interacts with your immune system, with your brain to regulate mood, and essentially with every biological system relevant to health throughout your brain and body. With Athletic Greens, I get the vitamins I need, the minerals I need, and the probiotics to support my microbiome. If you'd like to try Athletic Greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman and claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. There are a ton of data now showing that vitamin D3 is essential for various aspects of our brain and body health. Even if we're getting a lot of sunshine, many of us are still deficient in vitamin D3. And K2 is also important because it regulates things like cardiovascular function, calcium in the body, and so on. Again, go to athleticgreens.com/huberman to claim the special offer of the five free travel packs and the year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Today's episode is also brought to us by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the exact ratios of electrolytes are in Element, and those are sodium, magnesium and potassium, but it has no sugar. 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So again, if you want to try Element, you can go to Element, lmnt.com/huberman.