WHAT IS?
Having accidentally discovered the pleasure centre in a rat’s brain, Olds implanted an electrode and made it possible for his rats to stimulate this brain area by pressing a button. Under these circumstances, the rats simply pressed the button over and over again, ignoring food and water, until they eventually died.
When this experiment was later conducted with monkeys, the results were the same, leading researchers to conclude that all animals, including humans, can become addicted under the right conditions.
As you’ ll learn, technology, just like addictive substances, also has the power to stimulate our pleasure centres. – you’ d better control them.
But here’ the good news: since behavioural addictions are less intense than drug addictions, they’ re also easier to kick.
Pleasure centre
Deep working - being in a zone
To answer an email, you need to stop what you’re doing, thereby breaking your concentration. And it’ s estimated that, on average, it takes us around 25 minutes to return to a place of deep concentration after checking email. In a New York Times article, the Jurnalist Chuck Klosterman suggested that the act of answering an email provides a rewarding feeling, it’ s like achieving a small goal. This feeling can become addictive, however, and lead people to focus only on small, insignificant tasks.
Similarly, living in virtual world simultaneously with the real one leads to the exact effect of constatnly checking your feed (your brain associates it as completing a small task).
The fact that you do it 50 minutes on average per day, despite in small time chuncks,is making you uncapable of being present.
Mindfulness is a state in which you are conscious of your thoughts, your emotions and your place in the world – without judging yourself. You can practice mindfulness by taking the time to meditate.
Meditation has effect of quieting the brain’ s amygdala. That’ s why after you meditate, you feel calmer.
Meditation also increases activity in your brain’ s prefrontal cortex, making you feel happier and more at peace. All in all, meditation makes you feel better because it helps to restore balance to your brain.
Mindfulness
In this section, you will find the main points I have concluded after I have done my research for this challenge. Let me share it with you in the following paragraphs.