Fuckyeahneuroscience - http://fuckyeahneuroscience.tumblr.com/post/6751640726)

Dopamine. A hormone popularly associated with the acquisition of happiness. It’s released in excessive amounts when certain drugs are ingested and it’s released in everyday life when we experience something vastly pleasurable. However, there’s a massive misconception about the release of dopamine as a result of being given a reward.

A study was conducted on monkeys to test when exactly dopamine reaches its peak when the monkey is exposed to the potential receipt of a reward. Naturally, (and logically) one would assume that the hormone’s release would peak once the reward had been received: however if you believe this, like I and the actual researchers did, you would be mistaken.

Monkeys were trained to expect a reward when the signal of a bell was given. There was a purposeful break between the bell and the actual receipt of the reward, which was food, and during this time the dopamine levels were recorded. It was expected that the level of dopamine would peak when the food was actually received, however it didn’t. Instead the peak for the release of dopamine was a short time after the bell was rung. Of course, dopamine equates to happiness and so the monkey’s were happiest not when they received the food but whilst waiting in anticipation for it. A similar affect has been found in humans, yet, our neurology is slightly more complex and so we extrapolate this extraordinary phenomena.

For example, we can maintain high levels of dopamine in anticipation for a particular event for a number of years. We slug our way through the educational system, get ourselves into university, work our way through a career so eventually we can rest and live a free life with our pensions. The anticipation of freedom or achieving whatever goal we set out to achieve keeps us striving happily towards it: governed by the maintenance of a certain level of dopamine. Our level of happiness peaks, such studies would suggest, not when we have achieved our goal but in anticipation for it; when we receive the signal that the reward is soon to come.

The relation of this to religion? Robert Sapolsky suggests that not only can we extrapolate this phenomena over a period of years in anticipation for a life long goal but he argues that some of us maintain these dopamine levels in anticipation for a goal post-death: paradise. The idea of an infinite paradise after death appeals to us so much that we are excited and happy about achieving such a phenomenal goal. We maintain high levels of dopamine in anticipation for the event (achieved by continued practising of religiosity which serves as a signal; reminding us that the goal is soon to be achieved) which keeps us striving towards it for our entire lives. Perhaps this is why it is so difficult to detach people from religious views: they may be emotionally attached to them via dopamine because of the anticipation of an afterlife. Dopamine is not a weak or subtle hormone after all: proven by the fact that it causes some of the most severe drug addictions.

Perhaps religion is an addiction itself? The hormonal happiness it brings is too surreal and comforting for some to give up on, only to have it replaced by a not-so-fabulous life of meaningless and purposeless atheism.

This is interesting though. Would people still be willing to adopt religious views if the prospect of an after-life didn’t exist? Can it really be a hormone that spiritually awakens people or is this overly reductionist of a complex spiritual phenomena? Perhaps not all cases of religiosity are neurological but just think about how many people you hear say they are religious because it makes them happy or it is comforting…

[All the information in this post can be found here]

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Then I just finished reading it and remembered Marx saying that religion is opium of the masses. Likely true.