People can be mean.
If only there was a pill that made people be kinder to one another.
Yep, got that, check.
Hi there everyone, Julian here for DNews.
If you’ve ever been on a little place called the internet you may have noticed sometimes
it’s a bubbling cauldron of festering impotent rage.
Sometimes.
Some people just need to take a chill pill, and now scientists have discovered that a
pill already used to treat parkinsons will increase someone’s level of chillness.
Scientists from UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco recently brought in 35 participants and had
half take a placebo and the rest take a drug called tolcapone.
Tolcapone is already being used to treat parkinsons by prolonging the effects of dopamine, which
is a hormone and neurotransmitter commonly associated with pleasure and reward.
Then they had participants play a game where they divided money between themselves and
a stranger.
At the end of the double blind study the researchers noticed people on tolcapone tended to divide
the money more fairly than the people who took the sugar pill.
They concluded that just by increasing dopamine with a pill we can make people treat each
other better.
And thus all the world’s problems were solved.
Ha, kidding, of course it’s more complex than that.
First off there’s the problem of possible side effects.
The thing about dopamine is it’s addictive as all get out.
Like I said, dopamine is associated with pleasure and reward.
It’s a big part of what makes Facebook so addictive.
When you see you got a like or a comment, your brain rewards you with a little dopamine,
you feel good, and then you’re hooked.
Yes, Mark Zuckerberg is basically the biggest drug dealer in history
Parkinsons patients sometimes become addicted to their own medication, or develop new addictive
behaviors like compulsive gambling, shopping, or hypersexuality.
So taking a drug that keeps dopamine from being broken down in your prefrontal cortex
can have some gnarly unintended consequences.
There’s also the issue of what this means for us as human beings.
Should you take a pill that changes your behavior?
There are some instances where I say absolutely yes.
Particularly with depression, where a common problem is people don’t want to take their
medication because it feels like “cheating.”
But just to make yourself a little nicer?
It’s a great point to add to the philosophical discussion on human nature, but I’m not
a philosophy guy.
I’m a science guy.
And I just don’t know.
For more proof chemicals affect your behavior, check out Laci’s video on hangryness down
here.
Where do you stand on this issue?
Is it ok for people to take a pill to make them nicer?
Would you do it?
Let us know in the comments or you can find me on twitter @JHug00, and I’ll see you
next time on DNews.