The powerful and mysterious brain circuitry that makes us love Google, Twitter, and texting. - By Emily Yoffe - Slate Magazine

31 Dec 09

corax jk

Seeking: How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that's dangerous.

01 Dec 09

Jennifer Garcia

how the brain hardwires us to love google...seeking

twitter brain search psychology socialmedia google seeking

23 Oct 09

Carol Geisler

Slate computer addiction yoffe

11 Oct 09

Howard Rheingold

It is an emotional state Panksepp tried many names for: curiosity, interest, foraging, anticipation, craving, expectancy. He finally settled on seeking. Panksepp has spent decades mapping the emotional systems of the brain he believes are shared by all mammals, and he says, "Seeking is the granddaddy of the systems." It is the mammalian motivational engine that each day gets us out of the bed, or den, or hole to venture forth into the world. It's why, as animal scientist Temple Grandin writes in Animals Make Us Human, experiments show that animals in captivity would prefer to have to search for their food than to have it delivered to them.

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 juice that fuels the seeking system is the neurotransmitter dopamine. 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.

search

20 Sep 09

Chuck Brands

13 Sep 09

Jimmy Petersson

article

30 Aug 09

Joelle Nebbe-Mornod

26 Aug 09

Rafael Parente

greatarticle

25 Aug 09

Eugene

It is an emotional state Panksepp tried many names for: curiosity, interest, foraging, anticipation, craving, expectancy. He finally settled on seeking
"Seeking is the granddaddy of the systems." It is the mammalian motivational engine that each day gets us out of the bed, or den, or hole to venture forth into the world. It's why, as animal scientist Temple Grandin writes in Animals Make Us Human, experiments show that animals in captivity would prefer to have to search for their food than to have it delivered to them.
1 more annotations...
- Ever find yourself sitting down at the computer just for a second to find out what other movie you saw that actress in, only to look up and realize the search has led to an hour of Googling? Thank dopamine. Our internal sense of time is believed to be controlled by the dopamine system.

ceegates Gates

brain slate

seeking
seeking.
10 more annotations...
- seeking.
- We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in trouble
- we are stimulating the same system in our brains that scientists accidentally
  discovered more than 50 years ago when probing rat skulls.
- Later experiments done on humans confirmed that people will neglect
  almost everything—their personal hygiene, their family commitments—in order to
  keep getting that buzz.
- even crazed
- "Seeking is the granddaddy of the systems."
- experiments show that animals in captivity would prefer to
  have to search for their food than to have it delivered to them.
- Panksepp says that humans can get just as excited about abstract rewards as
  tangible ones
- dopamine.
- promote states of eagerness and directed purpose

24 Aug 09

Greg Vassallo

Seeking. You can't stop doing it. Sometimes it feels as if the basic drives for food, sex, and sleep have been overridden by a new need for endless nuggets of electronic information. We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in tr"><meta name="keywords" lang="en-us" content="Jaak Panksepp, Emily Yoffe, Yoffe, seeking, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Google, Facebook feeds, Search engines, Twitter, E-mail"><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8"><meta http-equiv="Content-Script-Type" content="text/javascript"><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://img.slate.com/css/w3c_global.css" xmlns=""><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://img.slate.com/css/w3c_article.css" xmlns=""><script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" xmlns="

twitter psychology socialmedia

Keith Krieger

twitter psychology search neuroscience

21 Aug 09

Buffy Hamilton

socialmedia search brain

20 Aug 09

Nancy Alibrandi

Seeking. You can't stop doing it. Sometimes it feels as if the basic drives for food, sex, and sleep have been overridden by a new need for endless nuggets of electronic information. We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in trouble

Brain Web2.0

19 Aug 09

sequoya library

twitter psychology search

18 Aug 09

Karthic Dixit

Brain Stimulation Learning Pleasure

17 Aug 09

Geekgirl 397

twitter socialmedia yoffe search internet brain psychology human

blendedlibrarian

article about how our brains are wired to want to search - it can be addictive. my point is this is a good example of the fact that we do like to search - not necessarily find anything

search only librarians like to search

Roger Zuidema

twitter trends socialmedia web2.0

studying how rats learned. They would stick an electrode in a rat's brain and, whenever the rat went to a particular corner of its cage, would give it a small shock and note the reaction.
We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in trouble. Google searches are becoming a cause of mistrials as jurors, after hearing testimony, ignore judges' instructions and go look up facts for themselves.
6 more annotations...
- studying how rats learned. They would stick an electrode in a rat's brain and, whenever the rat went to a particular corner of its cage, would give it a small shock and note the reaction.
- studying how rats learned. They would stick an electrode in a rat's brain and, whenever the rat went to a particular corner of its cage, would give it a small shock and note the reaction.
- 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.
- 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.
- They would stick an electrode in a rat's brain and, whenever the rat went to a particular corner of its cage, would give it a small shock and note the reaction.
- They would stick an electrode in a rat's brain and, whenever the rat went to a particular corner of its cage, would give it a small shock and note the reaction.

16 Aug 09

Spiro Bolos

How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that's dangerous.

psychology social technology google brain science search networking

15 Aug 09

Carrie Ashendel

Seeking is the dopamine of life. The bliss in the opiate of finding what you've been looking for doesn't compare.

psychology technology brain culture socialmedia

14 Aug 09

Tammy Kim

socialmedia twitter trends web web2.0

Fabian Aguilar

twitter

Google searches are becoming a cause of mistrials as jurors, after hearing testimony, ignore judges' instructions and go look up facts for themselves.
"My boyfriend has threatened to break up with me if I keep whipping out my iPhone to look up random facts about celebrities when we're out to dinner."
4 more annotations...
- In 1954, psychologist James Olds and his team were working in a laboratory at McGill University, studying how rats learned.
- He eventually discovered that if the probe was put in the brain's lateral hypothalamus and the rats were allowed to press a lever and stimulate their own electrodes, they would press until they collapsed.
- For humans, this desire to search is not just about fulfilling our physical needs.
- when we get thrilled about the world of ideas, about making intellectual connections, about divining meaning, it is the seeking circuits that are firing.

Jimmy Breeze

brain behaviour twitter essential interesting

Seeking. You can't stop doing it. Sometimes it feels as if the basic drives for food, sex, and sleep have been overridden by a new need for endless nuggets of electronic information. We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in trouble.
We reach the point that we wonder about our sanity. Virginia Heffernan in the New York Times said she became so obsessed with Twitter posts about the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest that she spent days "refreshing my search like a drugged monkey."
8 more annotations...
- In 1954, psychologist James Olds and his team were working in a laboratory at McGill University, studying how rats learned. They would stick an electrode in a rat's brain and, whenever the rat went to a particular corner of its cage, would give it a small shock and note the reaction. One day they unknowingly inserted the probe in the wrong place, and when Olds tested the rat, it kept returning over and over to the corner where it received the shock. He eventually discovered that if the probe was put in the brain's lateral hypothalamus and the rats were allowed to press a lever and stimulate their own electrodes, they would press until they collapsed.
- Olds, and everyone else, assumed he'd found the brain's pleasure center (some scientists still think so). Later experiments done on humans confirmed that people will neglect almost everything—their personal hygiene, their family commitments—in order to keep getting that buzz.
- But to Washington State University neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp, this supposed pleasure center didn't look very much like it was producing pleasure.
- Mammals stimulating the lateral hypothalamus seem to be caught in a loop, Panksepp writes, "where each stimulation evoked a reinvigorated search strategy" (and Panksepp wasn't referring to Bing).
- "Seeking is the granddaddy of the systems." It is the mammalian motivational engine that each day gets us out of the bed, or den, or hole to venture forth into the world. It's why, as animal scientist Temple Grandin writes in Animals Make Us Human, experiments show that animals in captivity would prefer to have to search for their food than to have it delivered to them.
- 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 juice that fuels the seeking system is the neurotransmitter dopamine. The dopamine circuits "promote states of eagerness and directed purpose," Panksepp writes. It's a state humans love to be in.
- An article by Nicholas Carr in the Atlantic last year, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" speculates that our constant Internet scrolling is remodeling our brains to make it nearly impossible for us to give sustained attention to a long piece of writing. Like the lab rats, we keep hitting "enter" to get our next fix.