How Gaming Affects Your Brain (Andrew Huberman)
Summary
TLDRThe video explores dopamine's powerful role in motivation, mood, and energy, with a focus on its connection to video games. Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman explains how video games can produce higher dopamine levels than nicotine, sex, or even cocaine. This dopamine surge can lead to addiction by progressively narrowing what brings pleasure, often causing people to neglect other aspects of life. The video offers insights into overcoming gaming addiction through dopamine detox, goal-setting, and accountability, emphasizing the importance of realistic and challenging steps to reclaim balance in life.
Takeaways
- 🎯 Dopamine plays a crucial role in how we feel, including motivation, energy, and mindset.
- 🧠 Video games can produce higher dopamine spikes (75% to 300% above baseline) compared to nicotine, sex, and even cocaine.
- 🎮 The novelty and constant engagement in video games trigger high levels of dopamine release, making them highly addictive.
- ⚖️ Dopamine peaks are followed by a drop in baseline dopamine, which can lead to lower motivation and mood after intense gaming sessions.
- 🕹️ Gaming addiction can cause people to lose interest in other activities like school, relationships, and fitness, narrowing their sources of pleasure.
- 📉 Continuous gaming can eventually deplete dopamine levels, leading to depression and loss of interest, sometimes resulting in severe consequences like suicide.
- 🧪 Addiction is described as a progressive narrowing of what brings pleasure, making life outside of gaming seem boring and unfulfilling.
- 🛑 A dopamine or video game detox is suggested as a way to reset dopamine levels, improving mood, concentration, and overall life quality.
- 📅 Setting realistic, challenging goals is essential when overcoming video game addiction. Gradual reduction or complete abstinence can help.
- 👥 Accountability, whether from friends, family, or community support, is vital for overcoming gaming addiction and maintaining healthier habits.
Q & A
What role does dopamine play in motivation and effort?
-Dopamine plays a key role in modulating motivation, effort, and desire. It influences how you feel, your willingness to push through effort, and your overall energy levels. It also affects mindset and whether you believe you can accomplish a task.
Which activity increases dopamine above baseline the most: nicotine, sex, chocolate, or video games?
-Video games have the potential to increase dopamine levels above baseline the most, with an increase ranging from 75% to 300%. In comparison, nicotine and sex increase dopamine by 100%, chocolate by 55%, and cocaine by 225%.
Why can video games be more stimulating than activities like sex or drug use?
-Video games can stimulate higher dopamine release due to their novelty factor, which engages the brain continuously. This novelty creates a high level of dopamine release, often exceeding more passive activities like sex or drug use.
How does dopamine influence time perception?
-Dopamine not only regulates motivation and pleasure but also controls time perception, making time feel faster or slower depending on dopamine levels in your brain.
What happens to dopamine levels after a peak in activity?
-After a peak in dopamine during a pleasurable or stimulating activity, the baseline level of dopamine in the brain drops below normal, which can make you feel less motivated or even down after the activity.
What is the connection between video games and addiction according to Andrew Huberman?
-Addiction is a progressive narrowing of activities that bring pleasure. With gaming addiction, people may lose interest in other aspects of life such as relationships, fitness, and school, leading to a depletion of dopamine response and potential depression.
How can a video game detox help with gaming addiction?
-A video game detox allows your brain to reset its dopamine levels by abstaining from video games and other stimulating activities. Over time, this can restore interest in other, less stimulating but healthier activities.
What are the signs that someone might be addicted to video games?
-Signs of gaming addiction include loss of interest in other activities like school, relationships, or fitness, and a progressive narrowing of what brings pleasure, which eventually leads to an inability to enjoy even gaming.
What steps can someone take to recover from a gaming addiction?
-To recover from gaming addiction, one can start by doing a video game detox, setting realistic and challenging goals, and finding accountability through friends or a community of people going through similar challenges.
Why is novelty important in video game engagement?
-Novelty in video games, especially those with high update speeds and constantly changing environments, can significantly boost dopamine levels. The constant exposure to new challenges keeps the brain highly engaged and excited.
Outlines
🧠 Understanding Dopamine's Role in Motivation and Desire
Dopamine plays a significant role in how we feel, influencing motivation, energy, and our ability to push through effort. While dopamine is often associated with pleasure, its real power lies in modulating multiple aspects of our mental and physical state. Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman explains that dopamine levels can vary depending on activities like nicotine, sex, chocolate, and video games. Interestingly, video games have the potential to raise dopamine levels even more than sex or nicotine. Huberman also stresses how the dopamine system functions, affecting everything from mindset to drive.
🎮 The Neuroscience of Gaming and Dopamine Addiction
Video games can create high levels of dopamine release, leading to gaming addiction. Huberman describes addiction as a progressive narrowing of what brings pleasure, which can cause people to lose interest in other important aspects of life such as relationships, fitness, and school. Over time, even gaming fails to provide the same dopamine release, which can lead to depression. Video games, especially those with high novelty, are potent triggers for dopamine, making them potentially more addictive than other activities. This behavior can severely deplete a person’s life quality.
🎯 Overcoming Gaming Addiction Through Detox and Goal Setting
Huberman emphasizes the importance of a video game detox to reset dopamine levels, allowing individuals to enjoy other aspects of life again. A detox can help reset a dopamine-depleted brain, helping people regain interest in less stimulating activities. He advises setting realistic yet challenging goals, taking small steps to reduce gaming or quit cold turkey, depending on individual needs. Detox programs have proven to help many people break their addiction, restoring balance in their lives.
🏆 Accountability and Support for Long-Term Success
To successfully combat gaming addiction, Huberman suggests accountability, either from friends and family or others going through similar experiences. Communities, such as Game Quitters, offer platforms for mutual support. Taking a quiz on gaming addiction severity can help individuals gauge their situation. Huberman also stresses the value of accountability partners and online communities to maintain motivation and reduce relapse risk, especially during difficult phases of the recovery process.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Dopamine
💡Neuromodulator
💡Baseline dopamine
💡Addiction
💡Video games
💡Novelty
💡Dopamine detox
💡Motivation
💡Craving
💡Accountability
Highlights
Dopamine modulates motivation, energy, mindset, and feelings of accomplishment, making it a key factor in our daily mood and drive.
Video games can increase dopamine levels between 75% and 300% above baseline, higher than nicotine, sex, or even cocaine.
Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman emphasizes the powerful role of dopamine in addiction, behavior, and brain development.
The brain is wired to seek repeated dopamine highs, leading to addictive behaviors such as video game overuse.
Dopamine affects more than pleasure; it is responsible for motivation, drive, craving, and even time perception.
Video games, particularly high-intensity and fast-paced ones, can trigger significant dopamine spikes due to their novelty and challenge.
Addiction is described as a 'progressive narrowing' of activities that bring pleasure, reducing interest in other areas of life like school, relationships, and well-being.
Over time, excessive video gaming can lead to diminished dopamine release from the activity itself, potentially resulting in depression.
Novelty plays a key role in video game dopamine release, with more intense and constantly updating games providing greater dopamine spikes.
Gaming addiction can cause a severe decline in life quality by making other activities seem uninteresting compared to the dopamine-driven excitement of gaming.
Huberman suggests a 'dopamine detox' to reset the brain's reward system by abstaining from addictive activities like video games and social media.
Resetting dopamine levels can improve mood, concentration, and overall well-being, as shown by individuals successfully completing detox programs.
Setting realistic, challenging goals is crucial to overcoming gaming addiction, with gradual progress being more effective than overwhelming changes.
Huberman advises starting small and gradually increasing efforts in non-gaming activities, such as reading or exercising, to regain balance.
Accountability is critical for overcoming gaming addiction, whether through friends, family, or community support from others facing the same challenge.
Transcripts
so let's talk about dopamine dopamine
has everything to do with how you feel
right now as you're listening to this it
has everything to do with how you will
feel an hour from now has everything to
do with your level of motivation and
your level of desire and your
willingness to push through effort it
modulates a bunch of things all at once
that's why it's so powerful at shifting
not just our levels of energy but also
our mindset also our feelings of whether
or not we can or cannot accomplish
something
I have a million dollar question for you
in which activity does dopamine increase
above Baseline the most nicotine sex
chocolate
or video games most of you probably
picked sex or nicotine but in reality
video games have a higher potential for
above normal dopamine increase according
to neuroscientist Andrew huberman who is
best known for his work on Behavioral
Sciences including human behavior
addiction neuropsychology and brain
development while nicotine and sex
increased dopamine 100 above Baseline
and chocolate 55 video games can range
between 75 and 300 percent to understand
how much dopamine that actually is well
cocaine is 225 percent imagine that at
the highest level of Engagement gaming
can produce more dopamine than even
having sex or doing cocaine now I know
what you're thinking that sounds a bit
crazy and personally I prefer to avoid
comparing things like video games to
drugs and alcohol which I'll share why
later in the video but for now if you
want to understand the Neuroscience of
video games and addiction including ways
to fix it then according to Andrew
huberman you're in luck
imagine it's your first time playing a
video game you turn on your PC and jump
into the game the first few games are
not that fun as you were trying to
figure out how to control your character
and also follow what's happening on the
screen at first it's too overwhelming
however when you actually do something
like perform that combo or do something
without looking at your controller you
feel awesome you keep playing to get
more of that awesomeness feeling and
then you play more and more why why
don't you just enjoy that feeling one
time and then move on well it's because
our brains are not designed to enjoy
stuff as a one-time experience now I can
blabber on about what dopamine is but I
think I'll let the master do the talking
so let's talk about dopamine the way
that your body uses dopamine is to have
a baseline level of dopamine meaning an
amount of dopamine that's circulating in
your brain and body all the time and
that turns out to be important for how
you feel generally whether or not you're
in a good mood motivated Etc and you
also can experience peaks in dopamine
above Baseline when you experience
something or you crave something
really desirable really exciting to you
very pleasurable what happens afterwards
is your Baseline level of dopamine drops
okay so these peaks in dopamine they
influence how much dopamine will
generally be circulating afterward and
you might think oh a big peak in
dopamine after that I'm going to feel
even better because I just had this
great event not the case what actually
happens is that your Baseline level of
dopamine drops dopamine has everything
to do with how you feel right now as
you're listening to this it has
everything to do with how you will feel
an hour from now has everything to do
with your level of motivation and your
level of desire and your willingness to
push through effort if ever you've
interacted with somebody who just
doesn't seem to have any Drive they've
given up or if you've interacted with
somebody who seems to have endless drive
and energy what you are looking at there
in those two circumstances is without
question a difference in the level of
dopamine circulating in their system
dopamine is what we call a
neuromodulator neuromodulators are
different than neurotransmitters
neurotransmitters are involved in the
dialogue between neurons nerve cells and
neurotransmitters tend to mediate local
communication just imagine two people
talking to one another at a concert
communication between them is analogous
to the communication carried out by
neurotransmitters whereas
neuromodulators influence the
communication of many neurons imagine a
bunch of people dancing where it's a
coordinated dance involving 10 or 20 or
hundreds of people
neuromodulators are coordinating that
dance in the nervous system what this
means is that dopamine release changes
the probability that certain neural
circuits will be active other neural
circuits will be inactive okay so it
modulates a bunch of things all at once
and that's why it's so powerful at
shifting not just our levels of energy
but also our mindset also our feelings
of whether or not we can or cannot
accomplish something it is not just
responsible for pleasure it is
responsible for motivation and drive
live primarily at the psychological
level also for craving those three
things are sort of the same motivation
driving craving it also controls time
perception okay that's cool and all but
let's get into what role video games
play in dopamine Neuroscience people
will play a video game they love it it's
super exciting to them and then they'll
keep playing and playing and playing
and either one of two things happens
typically both
first of all I always say addiction is a
progressive narrowing of the things that
bring you pleasure so oftentimes what
will happen is the person only has
excitement and can achieve dopamine
release
to the same extent doing that behavior
and not other behaviors and so they
start losing interest in school they
start losing interest in relationships
they start losing interest in Fitness
and well-being and depletes their life
and eventually what typically happens is
they will stop getting dopamine released
from that activity as well and then they
drop into a pretty serious depression
and this can get very severe and people
have commit suicide from these sorts of
patterns of activity that's the Bare
Basics of how a gaming addiction can
come about and if you want to learn more
about the Neuroscience of a brain on
video games then check out my video on
gaming and the Brain but Andrew human
adds a few points that go deeper
remember how according to Andrew
huberman playing video games could be
more of a motivation than having sex
smoking or even doing hard drugs like
cocaine the percentages were 75 to 300
and that essentially means that the more
intense and stimulating a video game is
the higher dopamine release there is
this is what Andrew hewman calls novelty
as an element in video game engagement
video games especially video games that
have a very high update speed where
there's novel territory all the time
novelty is a bit stimulus of dopamine
those can release dopamine somewhere
between nicotine and cocaine so very
high levels of dopamine release so
playing a video game like abzu where the
game pretty much plays itself and is
more like watching a movie could be
considered as low novelty engagement on
the other hand playing late levels of
the game risks of rain two could be more
of that high novelty that Andrew human
talked about another aspect of the
danger of video games that Andrew Hooman
points out is the neglect of other
Hobbies gaming is super exciting and
everything else is boring so you lose
interest in school work Sports
relationships Fitness hygiene other
hobbies and even your own well-being
pretty much when you become addicted to
gaming your quality life decreases
significantly and it's because your
brain only finds gaming to be exciting
just think about it why would your brain
choose less stimulating and more
difficult activities like working your
job doing your homework going out with
friends doing chores or shooting a
YouTube video like this our Basic
Instincts always choose the most
gratifying short-term option if you want
to overcome a lot of problems in your
life you have to turn on your
Consciousness in order to use the higher
functioning ability of the human brain
planning for the future and the long
term so here's some tips by Andrew human
to overcome a video game addiction first
try a video game detox you have probably
heard of a dopamine detox or abstaining
from an addictive activity is a basic
step towards recovery and that's because
it works as mentioned by Andrew human
addiction is a progressive narrowing of
the things that bring you pleasure where
a person only has excitement and can
achieve dopamine release to the same
extent doing that behavior and not other
behaviors some of you might be asking
what should I do if I experience a drop
in my Baseline level of dopamine because
of Engagement with some activity or some
substance that led to Big Peaks
just to put some color and example on
this a few episodes ago I talked about a
friend who have known a long time said
actually the child of a friend who
has basically become addicted to video
games he decided actually after seeing
that episode with Anna to do a 30-day
complete fast from phone from video
games and from social media of all kinds
he's now at day 29 he's really
accomplished this
not incidentally his levels of
concentration his overall mood are up
he's doing far far better
what he did is hard in particular the
first 14 days is really hard but the way
that you replenish the releasable pool
of dopamine is to not engage in these
dopaminergic
seeking behaviors because remember
typically people arrive at a place where
they want to stop engaging in these
behaviors or ingesting substances when
that dopamine is depleted when they're
not getting the same lift doing a video
game detox will reset your dopamine
levels and you can begin enjoying other
stuff other than gaming we've seen this
time and time again in our community on
game quitters over the last decade we've
seen hundreds and thousands of people
take a dopamine detox or a video game
detox and report that there are lives
improved significantly this is
especially important for people who have
an addiction or a gaming problem of some
kind now to find out if that's you you
can head over to gamecores.com and take
the quiz on the home page next set
realistic goals and take small steps
forward so here we're talking about goal
setting what we're saying is set goals
that are realistic but that aren't so
realistic that they're easy the goals
need to be realistic and truly
challenging don't set goals that are so
challenging and so lofty that they crash
that blood pressure system in the other
direction and make you or anyone feel
unmotivated if you have a bad video game
addiction perhaps it's not such a good
idea to overwhelm yourself some people
do better by just going cold turkey and
other people do better by reducing a bit
over time understand yourself and if you
are someone who does better with
reducing then start reducing gradually a
little bit each day now if you're
someone who has gone cold turkey and
done a detox then taking small steps
forward might look like
starting to read for 15 minutes and then
30 minutes and then an hour and doing
that slowly but surely the key is to
gradually but consistently improve
instead of trying to do everything at
once and then crashing and burning
because you didn't take your challenges
or weaknesses and progress into
consideration for some people not gaming
for even a few days can be such a big
deal however for others not so much the
important thing is to set your goals to
be realistic but also challenging and
not too easy the challenges where your
growth lies and so again I just
encourage you if you're curious go over
the gamecores.com and take the quiz on
the home page it will ask you a set of
nine different questions to determine
the severity whether not a problem a bit
of a problem or a problem with gaming
finally you want to have accountability
how do I access this alertness well
there are a number of ways some people
use some pretty elaborate psychological
gymnastics they will tell people that
they're going to do so something and
create some accountability that could be
really good so accountability perhaps
it's your close friends casual friends
or family that could support you and
hold you accountable to your gaming
habits that's one way but arguably a
better way is to have accountability
from people who are going through the
same thing as you that's why I urge you
to join our free Discord community on
game queries and get rid of your gaming
problem once and for all the links for
that are in the description and thanks
to Andrew human for all of his great
work and I look forward to sharing more
of his content soon now if you're
curious if you should play video games
after your detox then check out this
video from me from uh well quite a while
ago okay
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