Podcast
Stuff You Should Know
The hosts referenced Oliver Sacks' book Awakenings, noting it described how dopamine stimulation could revive patients with severe motor deficits, illustrating dopamine's motivational role.
So you were talking about how, you know, the peanut butter pie motivating you to get out of bed and actually go. That definitely jibes with research, particularly something reported by Oliver Sacks in...
— Episode: Selects: How Dopamine Works
Episode: Selects: How Dopamine Works
The hosts referenced Oliver Sacks' book Awakenings, noting it described how dopamine stimulation could revive patients with severe motor deficits, illustrating dopamine's motivational role.
So you were talking about how, you know, the peanut butter pie motivating you to get out of bed and actually go. That definitely jibes with research, particularly something reported by Oliver Sacks in the book and then later the movie Awakenings. There was an epidemic of something called encephalitic lethargia, which is what happened to Robert De Niro's character.
If a certain patient is stimulated, their dopamine is stimulated just enough, they can actually overcome that being frozen in place. And so there's a famous scene where Oliver Sacks tossed one of the patients some oranges and she caught them. Like she was a frozen statue and all of a sudden she's catching oranges and then juggles with them.
