To: Jeffrey E steingeeyacation©gmail.com] From: Sent: a 1:13:11 PM Subject: and here's what my UChicago guys said about the dopamine article... interesting.. Howard is a social + cog neurosci guy meeting with him and colleagues monday to discuss breathing/attention/emotion/cognition research met these guys through barnaby love them Begin forwarded message: From: Howard Date: August 15, 2009 5:24:37 AM PDT Thank One thing that is not made clear in the article is the magnitude of current scientific ignorance in this area. What I mean is this is not exactly settled knowledge but what has been found is reported accurately and what is believed is reported well too. However the dopamine story is not quite so simple. There is a researcher at the U of C who is studying the differential role of dopamine in reward based learning (as described in the article) and information based learning. These are somewhat separable (but can be intertwined in reality and daily life) and may involve slightly different brain networks. The fact that reduction of uncertainty is information (in Claude Shannon's theoretic sense) and also rewarding means that we likely use both networks but the function of DA may be more complex than we think. FYI I recently did a study as a pilot for an NIH grant (that was unfortunately not fimded) in which we used a routine means of social exclusion in play a multiplayer computer game (cyberball) which was followed by an episode of texting that established socially reinforcing partners. The goal of the work was to show that social remediation (by texting) of a socially induced hurt (exclusion in cyberball) was a more potent reinforcer (as in the article you sent) than the socially positive texting alone. Thanks! See you Monday. Best h EFTA_R1_01516068 EFTA02441543