Dr. Michael Kilgard

And there's value to that, not just reading about someone else's.

Let's talk about what the brain does.

So we know these different areas which you've talked about, locus coeruleus releasing norepinephrine in the brain.

When something new and exciting happens, someone claps their hands or pokes your ear, a bug flies in your face, the neurons fire.

They're surprised that that happened.

If it keeps happening, then the neurons stop firing.

So one of the things that's most surprising to me and interesting to me is your experiments by Richardson, DeLong, and others.

recording from these areas, nucleus basalis releasing acetylcholine, locus coeruleus, even dorsal raphe releasing serotonin, is that they're excited the first time and then they quickly get used to it.

And so they're always waiting for what the new thing is.

What's the thing that's going to be informative?

What's the thing that's going to have the most rewards?

What's the thing that's going to have the most risk?

And the problem is we don't know what the long-term consequences are of having over and over and over activation of that pathway.

We know that if you take a child and just sit them in orphanages for years upon years, they don't come out well.

That's pretty clear with animals or humans that deprivation is not good.

But what happens on the flip side when you stimulate and then you overstimulate?

We don't really know.

I don't know of any clear-cut, well-designed experiments.

The suggestion, as you know, is maybe.

it increases depression and anxiety among adolescents.