Satisfaction: The Science of Finding True Fulfillment
by: Gregory Berns
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Book Description
A brilliant scientist embarks on a journey to discover the answer to an essential question: How can we become truly satisfied?
In a fascinating investigation of the brain and its hunger for new experiences, Dr. Gregory Berns plumbs the lessons of fields as diverse as neuroscience, economics, and evolutionary psychology to find answers to the fundamental question of how we can find a more satisfying way to think and live.
A distinguished researcher, Berns bridges the gap between everyday experience and cutting-edge research by guiding the reader through the labs and hospitals where he and others are developing the science of how and why the brain is satisfied. We join him as he follows ultramarathoners across the Sierra Nevadas, enters a suburban S&M club to explore the deeper connection between pleasure and pain, partakes of a truly transporting meal, and ultimately examines his own marriage, where he faces the challenge of incorporating novelty into a long-term relationship.
In a riveting narrative filled with trenchant insights, Satisfaction proposes nothing less than a new way of understanding our own lives. By its conclusion, this truly inspiring book will convince you that the more complicated and even downright challenging a life you pursue, the more likely it is that you will be satisfied.
About the Author
Gregory Berns, M.D., Ph.D., is an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University. Profiled twice in the Science section of The New York Times, Berns and his research have been featured in media as diverse as O, The Oprah Magazine; Forbes; Nature; Money; New Scientist; Psychology Today; Self; Readers Digest; International Herald Tribune; and on CNN, NPR, and the BBC. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife and children.
Reviews:
From Publishers Weekly
Berns kicks off this thought-provoking exploration with a simple question, "What do humans want?" He challenges the belief that we are driven primarily to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Rather, Berns finds that "satisfaction comes less from the attainment of a goal and more in what you must do to get there." With a series of experiments using cutting-edge MRI scanning technology, he sees that the interaction of dopamine, the hormone secreted in the brain in anticipation of pleasure, and cortisol, the chemical released when we are under stress, produces the feelings people associate with satisfaction. Berns, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory, ventures into the physical world to prove his thesis, looking at bruised and reddened s&m enthusiasts and ultramarathoners collapsing after a 100-mile run. The author then brings his journey home, confronting issues in his own marriage and the sexual dissatisfaction that so often plagues long-term relationships. His conclusion is simple and compelling: people are wired for novel experience, and when we seek it out, we are satisfied. This will be a highly satisfying read for anyone interested in what gets us out of bed in the morning day after day.
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From Scientific American
Gregory Berns believes that the striatum, a tiny bit of tissue in the lower brain, holds the key to satisfaction in life. Berns, who teaches psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University, is interested in what motivates people to seek out novel experiences as a way to achieve satisfaction--a process, he says, controlled by the striatum. Yet it is surprising and disappointing that such a prolific researcher and author of scholarly articles has chosen to entertain readers with exploits rather than science. Only a few short sections of Satisfaction focus on his own work, so we get little understanding of how neuroscience is done. Explaining brain anatomy, chemistry and psychology to a general audience is a huge challenge--and one Berns does not really meet. Each chapter has a few pages of hard science but then describes at length a visit by Berns to an exotic location or an event that illustrates how people strive to meet extreme challenges as a way of attaining satisfaction. In one chapter, Berns flies to the Sierra Nevadas to observe ultramarathoners run for hours over mountain trails, which he then uses to write about brain metabolism and exhaustion. His other trips--to a volcano in Iceland and to a sadism and masochism club near his home in Atlanta, for example--follow the same pattern. These jaunts reach a high (or low) point when he ends up in a Long Island, N.Y., kitchen, his feet immersed in warm lemon juice and fennel, waiting for a chocolate cake to come out of the oven--as the chef reads Jorge Luis Borges's poetry to him in Spanish. The final chapter is somewhat embarrassing. Berns confesses that while he has jetted around he has left his wife at home with few sources of adult stimulation and two toddlers. In addition, he complains that their sex life has become routine. He finds a solution in the sexual crucible, a program developed by a Colorado marital therapist. The result is a night of lovemaking that pleases him in a way that he equates with an ultramarathoner's high. Some readers may fall in love with Berns's quests for novelty; others may find no satisfaction here.
From Booklist
A university research psychiatrist, Berns here combines neuroscience with a series of personal adventures to find out what gives people satisfaction. Infinite may be the range of human behavior, from the depraved to the noble, but to the extent behavior reflects striving for satisfaction, Berns summarizes the matter in one word: novelty. Easily bored, people seem to naturally want more of whatever interests them, but where does this drive come from? The clinical aspect of Berns' answer takes readers into the brain stem, specifically the striatum, which produces the neurotransmitter dopamine. Implicated in the sensation of pleasure, dopamine is also, paradoxically, involved in feeling pain, which may be why some people intentionally seek pain, such as at a sadomasochism club he visits or a 100-mile marathon he attends. Berns also entered a crossword contest, ate a meal cooked by a master chef, and spent an evening with an Icelandic storyteller. Readers interested in psychology will find Berns to be accessible, insightful, and comradely.
In exploring what creates 'personal satisfaction' this little gem explores a broad range of drivers, from neurochemistry to the laws of econonomics. While its core theme is nailed down to 'novelty produces dopamine--the brain's fuel--that drives satisfaction', it artfully weaves interesting lessons about sex, money, and personal well-being along the way. And even when the author gets a little carried away describing the more technical aspects of neuroscience, it is over in a page or two. If you like a book that makes you think, as well as giving you something new to talk to your friends about, this one is dynamite.
Part personal memoir part scientific odyssey, this book explores the relationship between pleasure and pain in the brain and how they are mediated and controlled. Ultimately, the author's goal is to explain how we attain true satisfaction in life, not merely physical pleasure, no matter how intense, since that is fleeting. The author's quest takes him from the labs of distinguished scientists to clubs frequented by the S & M crowd, and to countries like, oddly enough, Iceland, where he describes an interesting genetic study that is taking place. The author does a superb job of discussing the relevant neuroscience without getting too technical, covering the relevant history and scientists who have contributed to various areas of the brain research into pleasure and pain. The account of Dr. Robert Heath's work was fascinating, and that's just one of the many people discussed in the book. Add in some frank discussions of de Sade's and Masoch's lives and works, and how their writings relate to the issue of pain becoming pleasure and you have one of the most interesting brain books for the layman I've encountered in recent years.