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Social media platforms are using the same techniques as gambling firms to create psychological dependencies and ingrain their products in the lives of their users

create psychological cravings and even invoke “phantom calls and notifications” where users sense the buzz of a smartphone, even when it isn’t really there.

you get drawn into “ludic loops” or repeated cycles of uncertainty, anticipation and feedback — and the rewards are just enough to keep you going.

the procedure involves manipulating addicts' memories of past drug use, and could lead to non-pharmacological therapy for addiction, as well as psychiatric conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and phobia.

the procedure involves manipulating addicts' memories of past drug use, and could lead to non-pharmacological therapy for addiction, as well as psychiatric conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and phobia.

addicts quickly associate paraphernalia and other drug-associated cues with the pleasurable effects of the drug, so that seeing these cues triggers cravings and drug-seeking behaviour.

"Most neuroscientific research has been devoted to negative symptoms — depression and addiction, instead of joy," says Donatella Marazziti, an Italian psychiatrist who has studied neurotransmitter levels in the brains of people who've recently fallen in love.

And she's found that a brain in the initial stage of love looks surprisingly like a brain experiencing a drug addiction.

This, Fisher says, explains the feeling of obsession many people experience when falling in love. "It's what gives you the elation and the craving that is basic to romantic love.

Qnexa, which in clinical trials helped subjects lose about one-tenth of their weight on average, combines an appetite-suppressing stimulant with "an anticonvulsant shown to reduce cravings for binge-eaters." Lehrer says it seems to work partly by increasing "activity in the dopamine reward pathway," which "allows dieters to squeeze more satisfaction from every bite."

"People crave pleasure, and they don't stop until they get their fill, even if means consuming the entire pint of Häagen-Dazs." He says one lesson for dieters is that "it's important to seek pleasure from many sources," since "people quickly adapt to the pleasure of any single food." 

it contradicts the advice commonly heard from anti-obesity crusaders such as Kelly Brownell and David Kessler, who say the problem is that food is too delicious and too varied. Rats who eat their fill of one food, they note, will begin chowing down again if given something different. Hence variety is the dieter's enemy—not, as Lehrer suggests, his friend.

Fame, riches and pleasure beyond imagination. Sound great? He went on to write:“I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: They amount to 14.”Abd al-Rahman’s problem wasn’t happiness, as he believed — it was unhappiness

Happiness and unhappiness are certainly related, but they are not actually opposites.

Circumstances are certainly important. No doubt Abd al-Rahman could point to a few in his life. But paradoxically, a better explanation for his unhappiness may have been his own search for well-being. And the same might go for you.Continue reading the main story

Could a few feet of the cold stuff really have such a fundamental effect on beliefs and behavior? Absolutely, according to recent studies on how temperature influences us at an unconscious level. Researchers affiliated with the Center for Decision Sciences at Columbia Business School measured the public's changing attitudes about climate change

Those who felt that the current day was warmer than usual for the time of year were more likely to believe in and worry about global warming than those who thought it was cooler outside. They were also more likely to donate the money they earned from taking the survey to a charity that did work on climate change.

The researchers call this bias "attribute substitution," meaning that we take a simple judgment, like noting a warm or cold day, and apply it to a larger, more complex one, like whether the planet is headed for a meltdown

A 2010 study in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that the percentage of college students exhibiting narcissistic personality traits, based on their scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, a widely used diagnostic test, has increased by more than half since the early 1980s, to 30 percent. In their book “Narcissism Epidemic,” the psychology professors Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell show that narcissism has increased as quickly as obesity has since the 1980s. Even our egos are getting fat.

This is a costly problem. While full-blown narcissists often report high levels of personal satisfaction, they create havoc and misery around them. There is overwhelming evidence linking narcissism with lower honesty and raised aggression.

narcissism isn’t an either-or characteristic. It’s more of a set of progressive symptoms (like alcoholism) than an identifiable state (like diabetes). Millions of Americans exhibit symptoms, but still have a conscience and a hunger for moral improvement. At the very least, they really don’t want to be terrible people.

Why would anyone continue to use recreational drugs despite the medical consequences and social condemnation? What makes someone eat more and more in the face of poor health?

modern humans have designed the perfect environment to create both of these addictions.

Drug exposure also contributes to a loss of self-control. Dr. Volkow found that low D2 was linked with lower activity in the prefrontal cortex, which would impair one’s ability to think critically and exercise restraint

What makes it so hard to quit?

two culprits: aspartame and caffeine. Or, to be more precise: addiction to sweetness and to caffeine. Individually, they’re bad; together, they’re an addict’s nightmare.

A 12-ounce can of regular Coke has 34 milligrams of caffeine, whereas Diet Coke has 11 milligrams more, according to Coca-Cola. (An 8-ounce cup of coffee has about 95 mg.) Artificial sweeteners activate the brain’s reward system, but only about half as much as regular sugar, said Dr. Peeke. Faux sugar doesn’t pack the same wallop as the real stuff, so it keeps you wanting more and more.

There is no clinical definition for food noise, but the experts and patients interviewed for this article generally agreed it was shorthand for constant rumination about food. Some researchers associate the concept with “hedonic hunger,” an intense preoccupation with eating food for the purpose of pleasure, and noted that it could also be a component of binge eating disorder, which is common but often misunderstood.

“It just seems to be that some people are a little more wired this way,” he said. Obsessive rumination about food is most likely a result of genetic factors as well as environmental exposure and learned habits

The active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy is semaglutide, a compound that affects the areas in the brain that regulate appetite, Dr. Gabbay said; it also prompts the stomach to empty more slowly, making people taking the medication feel fuller faster and for longer. That satiation itself could blunt food noise

we’ve had everything from jeans commercials to rock anthems to political conventions celebrating freedom as the highest ideal.

People are much more at liberty these days to follow their desires, unhampered by social convention, religious and ethnic traditions and legal restraints.

big thinkers down through the ages warned us this was going to have downsides. Alexis de Tocqueville and Emile Durkheim thought that if people are left perfectly free to pursue their individual desires, they will discover their desires are unlimited and unquenchable. They’ll turn inward and become self-absorbed. Society will become atomized. You’ll end up with more loneliness and less community.

If you saw the film "Argo," no, you didn't miss this development, which is recounted in Mendez's book about the real-life operation. It wasn't there because director Ben Affleck and screenwriter Chris Terrio replaced it with an even more dramatic scenario, involving canceled flight reservations, suspicious Iranian officials who call the Hollywood office of the fake film crew (a call answered just in time), and finally a heart-pounding chase on the tarmac just as the plane's wheels lift off, seconds from catastrophe.

they've caught some flak for the liberties they took in the name of entertainment.

And they aren't alone - two other high-profile best-picture nominees this year, Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty" and Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln," have also been criticized for different sorts of factual issues.

Building the best life does not require fealty to feelings in the name of authenticity, but rather rebelling against negative impulses and acting right even when we don’t feel like it. In a nutshell, acting grateful can actually make you grateful.

some people are just naturally more grateful than others. A 2014 article in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience identified a variation in a gene (CD38) associated with gratitude. Some people simply have a heightened genetic tendency to experience, in the researchers’ words, “global relationship satisfaction, perceived partner responsiveness and positive emotions (particularly love).” That is, those relentlessly positive people you know who seem grateful all the time may simply be mutants.

Evidence suggests that we can actively choose to practice gratitude — and that doing so raises our happiness.

EACH time I hear someone say, “Do the math,” I grit my teeth.

Imagine, if you will, using, “Do the lit” as an exhortation to spell correctly.

my field is really about ideas above anything else. Ideas that inform our existence, that permeate our universe and beyond, that can surprise and enthrall.

founders from Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Zynga and PayPal, and executives and managers from companies like Google, Microsoft, Cisco and others listened to or participated

they debated whether technology firms had a responsibility to consider their collective power to lure consumers to games or activities that waste time or distract them.

Eric Schiermeyer, a co-founder of Zynga, an online game company and maker of huge hits like FarmVille, has said he has helped addict millions of people to dopamine, a neurochemical that has been shown to be released by pleasurable activities, including video game playing, but also is understood to play a major role in the cycle of addiction. But what he said he believed was that people already craved dopamine and that Silicon Valley was no more responsible for creating irresistible technologies than, say, fast-food restaurants were responsible for making food with such wide appeal. “They’d say: ‘Do we have any responsibility for the fact people are getting fat?’ Most people would say ‘no,’ ” said Mr. Schiermeyer. He added: “Given that we’re human, we already want dopamine.”

He tried to make a handful of minced meat stick to a skewer, and said, sardonically, “See here, true Sharia has finally arrived in Swat.”

2009, the Pakistani Army launched an offensive to drive the Taliban out of Swat—and forced Fazlullah across the border, into Afghanistan. These days, the valley is relatively peaceful, and Pakistani tourists have returned in droves.

Mehsud, who had been “killed” by American drone strikes on at least two previous occasions, was actually killed by another drone strike at the start of November—transforming him overnight, in the eyes of Pakistani politicians and commentators, from a mass murderer into a marty

people usually experience the sensation of happiness whenever they have both health and freedom. It’s a simple formula: Happiness = Health + Freedom

I’m talking about the everyday freedom of being able to do what you want when you want to do it, at work and elsewhere. For happiness, timing is as important as the thing you’re doing

Matching your mood to your activity is a baseline requirement for happiness

“You are a mashup of what you let into your life,”

Brain Pickings — a filtration mechanism that lets into your life things that are interesting, meaningful, creatively and intellectually stimulating, memorable.

we’re wired to love certain kinds of information, most notably affirmation, so we seek out information that confirms, rather than challenges, our existing beliefs

innovation often comes at a price. And sometimes I wonder if the price is a piece of ourselves.

I’m not even sure these new instruments are genuinely “social.” There is something decidedly faux about the camaraderie of Facebook, something illusory about the connectedness of Twitter.

Twitter is not just an ambient presence. It demands attention and response. It is the enemy of contemplation.