Chapter 13: Further Reading

Essential Sources

Schultz, W. (1997). "A neural substrate of prediction and reward." Science, 275(5306), 1593–1599. The foundational paper on reward prediction error — showing that dopamine signals the difference between expected and actual rewards, not pleasure itself.

Berridge, K. C., & Robinson, T. E. (2016). "Liking, wanting, and the incentive-sensitization theory of addiction." American Psychologist, 71(8), 670–679. The key paper on the wanting/liking distinction. Essential for understanding why dopamine drives pursuit behavior without necessarily producing pleasure.

Sepah, C. (2019). "The Definitive Guide to Dopamine Fasting 2.0: The Hot Silicon Valley Trend." Blog post. Sepah's original proposal and his follow-up clarification. Worth reading to see the distance between the original (reasonable CBT strategy) and the viral version (pseudoneuroscience).

Wise, R. A., & Robble, M. A. (2020). "Dopamine and addiction." Annual Review of Psychology, 71, 79–106. Comprehensive review of dopamine's role in addiction — much more nuanced than pop accounts. Shows the complexity that "dopamine = pleasure" obscures.

Weisberg, D. S., et al. (2008). "The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations." Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(3), 470–477. Essential for understanding why brain-based explanations seem more credible even when they add no information.

Racine, E., Bar-Ilan, O., & Illes, J. (2005). "fMRI in the public eye." Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6(2), 159–164. Analysis of how media coverage of brain imaging studies tends toward oversimplification and neuro-realism (treating brain images as more definitive than they are).

Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. Penguin Press. A neuroscientist's comprehensive guide to the biology of behavior — demonstrating the complexity that pop neuroscience flattens. Chapter on dopamine is excellent.

Burnett, D. (2016). Idiot Brain. W. W. Norton. A neuroscientist's entertaining debunking of brain myths, including the "dopamine = pleasure" simplification.

Lieberman, D. Z., & Long, M. E. (2018). The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity — and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race. BenBella Books. A popular book on dopamine that is more accurate than most. Still somewhat simplified but acknowledges the prediction and motivation functions rather than reducing dopamine to "pleasure."

Online Resources

Huberman Lab Podcast. Andrew Huberman's neuroscience podcast has covered dopamine in detail. While more accurate than most pop sources, Huberman's content should also be evaluated critically — even accurate communicators can oversimplify for audience accessibility.

NIH: National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) — Dopamine fact sheets. Government-produced educational material on dopamine and the reward system, more accurate than most popular sources.