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The Internet Communications Medicine

The Biochemistry of Searching the Internet 63

Posted by Soulskill from the how-much-of-your-life-has-wikipedia-claimed dept.
Slate is running a story about how searching the internet and keeping up with events through instant communication can fulfill biochemical needs within our brains. Research has shown that anticipation and simply "wanting" can stimulate dopamine production in the brain, and an internet full of answers plays right into that. Quoting: "For humans, this desire to search is not just about fulfilling our physical needs. Panksepp says that humans can get just as excited about abstract rewards as tangible ones. He says that when we get thrilled about the world of ideas, about making intellectual connections, about divining meaning, it is the seeking circuits that are firing. ... The dopamine circuits 'promote states of eagerness and directed purpose,' Panksepp writes. It's a state humans love to be in. So good does it feel that we seek out activities, or substances, that keep this system aroused — cocaine and amphetamines, drugs of stimulation, are particularly effective at stirring it."
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The Biochemistry of Searching the Internet More

The Biochemistry of Searching the Internet

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  • First post (Score:3, Funny)

    by BadAnalogyGuy ( 945258 ) <BadAnalogyGuy@gmail.com> on Sunday August 16, 2009 @11:07AM (#29083947)

    First Post!

  • Searching fulfills the dopamine drive in our brains..... Why do I think that Rule 34 applies here?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Searching fulfills the dopamine drive in our brains..... Why do I think that Rule 34 applies here?

      Whatever man! My inerenet has been DOWN for hours and I need some INFORMATION!!! I need it NOW! Goddamn it! Now, get the fuck out of the way!!

      I wish there was some sort of fucking patch I can put on my fucking arm when my interweb is DOWN or Wellbutrin or something man!. Jesus Mother Fucking Christ!

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by maxwell demon ( 590494 )

      Damn, you made me to google for rule 34! And that after having read how dangerous seeking is!

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 )
      So where is your secret cache of googling-porn.... . I'm not talking about searching images with safe search off, I'm talking about streaming screen captures of a particularly skilled googler performing complex searches tying together some disparate bits of web info into a coherent world view. . Mmmmm googly!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by severoon ( 536737 )

      zOMG guys! If this research is right, then that means someone could probably make money by writing a software app that does nothing but entertain people by exploiting this brain response! Like, instead of an app that is an electronic spreadsheet, an app that lets you shoot people in the face and beat up hookers. Even though there's no useful output, I bet people would totally BUY IT!!!

  • EVERY FUCKING THING fulfills biochemical needs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16, 2009 @11:29AM (#29084147)

    Each and every thing we do fulfills biochemical needs within our brains.

    The dopamine system is great for sending the signals that a prehistoric smartaleck apeman needs up from the lizard brain without needing culture or language or any real reasoning.

    Just good vibes to tell us we our meeting our survival minimums.

    These impulses work for the hunter-gatherer of the Olduvai or the 21st-century equivalent. And although near universal, the domapine system is a great inkblot for all kinds of projection of bad values and druggie-type bad behviours, when it works the same way for all behaviours good bad and in between.

  • Porn (Score:2, Funny)

    by Jonas Buyl ( 1425319 )

    For humans, this desire to search is not just about fulfilling our physical needs.

    errr, yes it is?

  • Minimal Multitasking... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xin Jing ( 1587107 ) on Sunday August 16, 2009 @12:01PM (#29084395)
    I think most internet activity could fall under this banner. The internet is another form of entertainment, like cable was years ago and still is today to a lesser degree. What I find truely interesting is that internet denizens have access to more: more browser tabs, more processor cores, more gigahertz, more bandwidth to accomplish the same old three tasks. When people reach informational saturation and miss a live conversation I hear them exclaim, "sorry I was multitasking", but it's just an excuse for mismanaged prioities. I heard an NPR segment recently where people that were asked to remember a 7 digit string of numbers were suddenly faced with deciding on a healthy piece of fruit or a slice of cake, and others had to remember a shorter string of numbers. The test data showed that by a large margin more data juggled tended to override sensibility (the fruit) and cause an impuse to satisfy desire (the cake). I think this paradigm fits in nicely with the desire to surf the net and satisfy a need. Again it's another situation where a majority of people are experiencing data overflow and getting productive work done and give in to the feel good reward of surfing the internet for fun. I suspect that people who interrupt a live conversation to check a text message or respond to an instant message are attempting to multitask but end up putting one conversation on hold in order to respond to another. Yet let the boss walk by while his workers are surfing the latest Hollywood fashion news and watch those browser windows minimize! Those employees weren't multitasking they were feeding the impuse beast.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Trahloc ( 842734 )

      When people reach informational saturation and miss a live conversation I hear them exclaim, "sorry I was multitasking", but it's just an excuse for mismanaged prioities.

      Mismanaged priorities? I disagree. Finding an odd fact or surfing something of interest is infinitely more rewarding than listening to someone complain about work or whatever mediocre subject matter they bring up. Talk about something fascinating and you'll get pushed up higher in the priority list. I've got at least 2 conversations I'm ignoring right now to respond because while your post may not be the most fascinating it is more interesting than listening to friends jabber on about how work sucked to

  • If this were true for everybody... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Then why do some people act as if discovering and learning were *painful*? I see clearly the point mentioned in the summary - learning gives me almost a rush. But the people who refuse to read the manual, refuse to use a search engine, and refuse to read the error message on the dialog box on their screen, these people act as if they were wired backwards. I've seen people who would rather endure physical agony than to spend one minute learning with their brain.

    This could lead to the most significant discove

    • Well, all people enjoy learning. It's just the difference of what they enjoy to learn. Some people enjoy learning about the latest affair of some celebrity, or about what some movie star wears at some event. I prefer learning about new things related to math, physics and computers. Those who would learn all about celebrities usually think math, physics and computers are boring. I consider celebrity stuff boring.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        And I bet you judge those people, too. I bet you think that what THEY want to learn is INFERIOR to what you do.
         
        You are part of the problem. Learn to accept.

  • that the comments on this posting would be all meta FTW.

    After all, I *am* in New York City.

  • It doesn't explain... (Score:3, Funny)

    by sjs132 ( 631745 ) on Sunday August 16, 2009 @12:16PM (#29084507) Homepage Journal
    "He says that when we get thrilled about the world of ideas, about making intellectual connections, about divining meaning, it is the seeking circuits that are firing"

    Hmmm... Intellectual Connections, Nope, That doesn't explain facebook or twitter... NEXT!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by arielCo ( 995647 )
      Oh, it's not intellectual as in "analytic thought" but rather "cognition": "gee, now I know this little tidbit [even if it's that Alice's looking for a dog] - WANT MOAR". It's a built-in driver for all we're supposed to seek - not only information and intellectual exercise, but food, wealth, etc. The news here is that it's not about satiating some real/perceived need, but that the act of seeking has its own reward - and often you get hooked on it.
  • Dont you dare tell the chinese government. They will get legitimate reason for torture to cure internet addiction.
  • ... than Google and Crackberries. It's about lusting for someone, then being only mildly satisfied once we have what we wanted. Also about grown cats releasing their prey to keep "playing" with it. Addictions and hoarding behaviour too - knowing when we have enough and looking for more will bring no additional reward (huge, über-complete MP3 collections?). Go read it, it's worthy.

  • So good does it feel that we seek out activities, or substances, that keep this system aroused -- cocaine and amphetamines...

    So true. But I doubt chopping up a search-engine with a credit-card and snorting it through a rolled-up $100 off you girlfriend's ass will tingle your "dopamine circuits" in quite the same way -- although that voice on the old Yahoo! ads always seemed pretty excited.

  • +4 Insightful oblig xkcd reference (Score:3, Interesting)

    by arielCo ( 995647 ) on Sunday August 16, 2009 @12:33PM (#29084651)
    Check out the tab explosion at xkcd [xkcd.com]. It's straight to the point.

  • outlaw thinking (Score:4, Funny)

    by bugi ( 8479 ) on Sunday August 16, 2009 @12:41PM (#29084721)

    Thanks for spoiling it for the rest of us. Now intellectual pursuits such as searching for a cure for cancer will be outlawed.

    If people aren't even free to piss away their own money, do you really think we'll be free for much longer to get high on thoughts? Let me guess, thinking leads to harder drugs?

  • ...StumbleUpon.
  • ...Gathering... ...Gathering... gee that was really satisfying, I why?

  • To me, the most interesting bit in this article was the fact that the famous experiment with the rat and the pleasure lever connected to its brains WASN'T connected to the pleasure/reward center!

    Though this "seeking" explanation to the non-orgasmic state of the subjects with that electrode in their brain is... more complicated, so it's not about to replace the old interpretation.

  • "Media Ecology" is the phrase to look up. Neil Postman, Marshall Mcluan and all that.

    Our technologies are not inert and benign. They're not "just there". Using them affects us.

    Answer me honestly -- after a couple decades of internet usage, what is your attention span like? When is the last time you read a long, hard, book?

    Yes, the Web is useful. But there's a cost.

    • Answer me honestly -- after a couple decades of internet usage, what is your attention span like?

      Personally? Same as it always was. I can focus on things long-term, but I can get distracted by the pretty lights and colors of a TV set, often during certain long conversations with a member of the opposite sex.

      So, uh, typical male attention span, then.

      And I am definitely an Internet addict. While my backup plan is always a good book, if I'm off it for long enough I do get a bit twitchy.

      When is the last time you read a long, hard, book?

      Let's see.... The Ciardi translation of the Divine Comedy. I reached Canto 12 of Purgatorio this morning.

      Before tha

  • Was this web page written by evil crackers ? Why is my beloved Mac writing files called /Users/Downloads-1-1, Downloads-1-2 ??? This freaks me out, because I've been told there are NO VIRUSES FOR MAC !!! Seriously, there is a fresh discussion in Apple forums, http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2113155&tstart=0&start=0 [apple.com]. This is a (sad thing) pow 2 : Mac vulnerabilities , coming from Slashdot

  • Sometimes I wonder if the populations in developed countries are stable or falling because people in those countries easily find distraction from the biological imperatives that have driven people in the past.

    The situation could be very similar to the situation with a certain Austrailian Jewel Beetle [amitywilczek.com], which is in decline because the male of the species prefers discarded brown glass beer bottles to the shiny red female beetles. Could it be that modern life contains distractions equally effective at distrac

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