Change, Technically

Are we addicted to talking about dopamine? In this episode, we tackle dopamine hype with real science: what dopamine is doing in the brain, how we study it, and how it's been misunderstood.
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SHOW NOTES
two articles tackling dopamine nation: 
https://awjuliani.medium.com/beyond-dopamine-nation-towards-a-fuller-picture-of-addiction-and-recovery-97b37e17235e 
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/opinion/addiction-dopamine-brain-chemistry.html?unlocked_article_code=1.yVA.uvbi.PVfFQMzMudvb&smid=url-share  
other great takes on this topic: 
mark humphries "the crimes against dopamine" https://medium.com/the-spike/the-crimes-against-dopamine-b82b082d5f3d 
https://youtu.be/HZRGWPLeMIg?si=Ponb7AagEa4QN2BY 
things that cause dopamine release, as studied with PET:
video games https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9607763/ 
music https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.2726  
yes, cocaine https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9331351/ (relatedly, nora volkow's work: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18617195/)
not just reward in isolation https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811922009521 
more papers that fueled the sciency talk here: 
https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.neuro.28.061604.135722
https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1513619112
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1014269108 
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32974872/ 
songs covered in the episode:
"dopamine" by robyn https://youtu.be/vitil9qMN6A?si=mMu1FliQP4-6QSIE 
"dopamine" by madelline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Upy4rB8V3T4
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Learn more about Ashley:
https://ashleyjuavinett.com/
https://mastodon.social/@analog_ashley
ashleyjuavinett.bsky.social

Learn more about Cat:
https://www.drcathicks.com/
https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina
grimalkina.bsky.social

You can find the talk Cat gave about learning and its citations here: https://github.com/DrCatHicks/tailscale_talk 
On beliefs about humans being more genetically dissimilar than they are, work primarily done by Brian Donovan: Donovan et al. (2024). "Humane genomics education can reduce racism." Science, 383(6685), 818–822. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi7895 

Learn more about Ashley:
https://ashleyjuavinett.com/
https://mastodon.social/@analog_ashley
ashleyjuavinett.bsky.social

Learn more about Cat:
https://www.drcathicks.com/
https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina
grimalkina.bsky.social

📚 PREVIEW CAT'S BOOK, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOFTWARE TEAMS! Pre-orders will be available in June.
 https://www.routledge.com/The-Psychology-of-Software-Teams/Hicks/p/book/9781032963389   
📝 EPISODE NOTES
Jeff Shreve's Substack that Ashley mentions in the beginning https://jeffshreve.substack.com/
Ashley is not linking anything about the reiki on rats paper here because she doesn't want that paper to get more hits than warranted but she *does* you to see the figure from it and has put it here for your viewing: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WQGGjh2VT87XbbmaqdK2g7tyyknzwr6s/view?usp=sharing 
Cat read a couple of papers about creativity for this episode, including: Inspired by Distraction: Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation and Innovation Relies on the Obscure: A Key to Overcoming the Classic Problem of Functional Fixedness
Learn more about Ashley:
https://ashleyjuavinett.com/
https://mastodon.social/@analog_ashley
ashleyjuavinett.bsky.social

Learn more about Cat:
https://www.drcathicks.com/
https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina
grimalkina.bsky.social

Can people learn in the AI era? Ashley and Cat think so. We talk about Ashley's experiences teaching programming and co-designing WITH students (not against them) to create shared classroom norms around AI, and about the metacognitive skills that Cat is sharing with the software teams and developers she works with to bring a "dynamic textbook" approach to using AI to build understanding, not degrade it. 
Cat's Learning Opportunities Claude Skill, with a scientific reference list to the effects we also talk about in this episode, can be found here:
https://github.com/DrCatHicks/learning-opportunities

Cat also wrote a recent piece about the complexity of measuring the impact of AI in Software Organizations: https://www.fightforthehuman.com/how-not-to-measure-the-roi-from-ai-in-your-software-organization/
Learn more about Ashley:
https://ashleyjuavinett.com/
https://mastodon.social/@analog_ashley
ashleyjuavinett.bsky.social

Learn more about Cat:
https://www.drcathicks.com/
https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina
grimalkina.bsky.social

This isn't the episode we planned, but it's what is on our minds right now. We talk about the power of knowing your neighbors and a few ways in which we've found solace and meaning in building our local community. Here's a glimpse into our playbook -- tell us about yours in the comments.
Learn more about Ashley:
https://ashleyjuavinett.com/
https://mastodon.social/@analog_ashley
ashleyjuavinett.bsky.social

Learn more about Cat:
https://www.drcathicks.com/
https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina
grimalkina.bsky.social