Chemical

Lessons for Lovers

Romantic love is mental illness.  But it's a pleasurable one.  It's a drug.
It distorts reality, and that's the point of it.  It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw.
- Fran Lebowitz
 

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

- Robert Frost
 

One type of love originates in the hypothalamus (a part of the brain also present in other animals).  It is programmed into DNA. A chemistry between lovers is not just a turn of phrase; it is a torrential release of brain chemicals and hormones.

Chemistry Chart

Testosterone - This hormone, produced in both men and women, regulates sexual desire and too much is counterproductive.
Progesterone - A testosterone antagonist, it lowers sex drive (in the pill as well).  It is a mild sedative and has a calming effect.
Estrogen - Makes women sexually attractive and more receptive.  


Phenylethylamine - A neurotransmitter released by a region of the brain called the hypothalamus, produce in capillaries and in catecholaminergic terminals.  Phenylethylamine, or PEA, causes you to fall madly in love with someone.  It is a natural form of amphetamine that floods the regions of the brain involved in sexual excitement.  It generates feelings of euphoria.  But it doesn't work alone when you are attracted to someone.  People who profess high passion for each other have equally high levels.  So-called "love at first sight" causes a circulatory surge.  The decay rate means the effects last only 18 months to five years in a given relationship - long enough to procreate and protect a child during early years of life.  Affairs and second (or third) marriages can cause the clock to be reset.
Dopamine - Involved in the "attention-getting" phase of attraction, it signals the brain that a reward is possible and helps to focus the attention.  Under the influence of dopamine, people are more talkative and excitable.  It is released when a person smokes a cigarette (one of tobacco's addictive components) and is a factor in attention deficit disorder.  It promotes action.
Serotonin - Helps to control mood and reduce its fluctuations.  A shortage of this brain chemical is widely associated with depression, so antidepressant drugs such as Prozac are designed to increase serotonin levels (as can pleasant conversation with your friends).  High levels make you feel good about yourself and encourage mate selectivity but it may sometimes increase violent behaviour and thrill-seeking when levels are too high.  Lower amounts are associated with less discriminating choices of mates and overly aggressive sexual behaviour.
Norepinephrine - Adrenalin: this neurotransmitter gets your blood racing and primes you for action.  As part of the "fight or flight" response, it floods the brain while you are deciding whether to kill or kiss.
Prolactin - Decreases sex drive, especially in men.
Endorphins - Produced in the brain; released in response to touch and sex, they produce overall positive feelings.
Oxytocin - Secreted from the pituitary gland, it bathes the brain and reproductive tracts of both women and men.  This chemical wash increases sensitivity to touch and encourages grooming and cuddling in both sexes.  It reduces stress-causing hormones in the body and influences bonding between adults (friends as well). It keeps relationships together after phenylethylamine has decayed.  "Touch deprivation" depletes the supply and sends people running to their hairdresser or masseuse.  Consuming several alcoholic drinks can decrease it. Stimulating oxytocin levels generates affection.  Oxytocin and its role in affection is one reason for such youthfulness.
Vasopressin - Hormone produced by the pituitary, it is an antidiuretic (causes water retention), increases blood volume and also blood pressure.  It is identified as the "monogamy molecule" and modulates testosterone.  It levels extremes of feelings (including anger), and increases focus in lovemaking.
Chocolate - The fats in dark chocolate trigger the brain's production of natural opiates.  Three compounds in chocolate enhance a feeling of well-being: anandamide, a cannabinoid which activates the same receptors in the brain as the active ingredient in marijuana and two compounds which increase the appetite.
Pheromones - Chemicals in the body that send signals to others through a subliminal passageway of scent called the vomeronasal system.
DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone) - Secreted by adrenal glands, it is a weak androgen.  Most sex hormones and and pheromones are derived from it.  Males and females have roughly equal amounts in their bloodstream.
Cultural belief in passionate love forever is misplaced!

Source: http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/drugs/you_dont_need_love.htm

The Rubber Duck Method

This might be of help while debugging a code or solving a problem. :)

1) Beg, borrow, steal, buy, fabricate or otherwise obtain a rubber duck
   (bathtub variety)
2) Place rubber duck on desk and inform it you are just going to go over
   some code with it, if that's all right.
3) Explain to the duck what you code is supposed to do, and then go into
   detail and explain things line by line
4) At some point you will tell the duck what you are doing next and then
   realise that that is not in fact what you are actually doing.  The duck
   will sit there serenely, happy in the knowledge that it has helped you
   on your way.

The perfect combination of humor and advice! 
 
Source: http://lists.ethernal.org/oldarchives/cantlug-0211/msg00174.html

Sleep, among other things

3:29 AM

Is there something wrong with the clock? I wonder, as usual. I guess I am just living in the wrong side of Earth. I am sure 80% of the people in my campus are sleeping right now. It is too late even for the students who sleep 'late' at night. It is but early morning. Just an hour or so before the early birds wake up. 3 AM is supposed to be the darkest hour before dawn. I also read somewhere that due to this reason people often refer to 3 AM as the 'devil's hour'. 4 AM is supposedly the 'brahma muhurtam', an auspicous time. People are advised to wake up (and get up) at 4 AM and pray to God. One person takes this belief even further and conducts IIT-JEE coaching classes at 4 AM sharp in the morning. Of course, he strongly believes this will make the students understand every bit of information that is taught in the class. I just sigh. Poor little kids during the height of their teenage years being woken up by alarms(when termed more appropriately parents) before 4 AM so that they are in time for the class. And ironically, this coaching centre is very popular at my hometown, ranks first in the minds of many to-be-students-and-parents-of-students-of-IITJEE-classes.

Now, for an average teenager this is perhaps a torture. But, I would gladly welcome it. My attention-span, motivation, alert-ness and energy starts rising at 1 AM and peaks at 3 AM and begins to gradually fall down around 7 AM or so. Ironically, my classes start at 8 AM :-). This isn't a new thing though. On a fateful day, I was born at 9 PM and I remember my parents telling me that I, as a child, would sleep all day and wake up bright at 9 PM when my dad and uncle come home from work and lovingly hug me. This often means sleepless nights for my mom and dad. Poor mom and dad. For no fault of theirs, they had to fight of sleep for the entire night. I hear its common for children to wake up randomly at midnight screaming, but boy, I was sweet in that I was a lot more predictable. Gradually, as my adolescence started, my parents could sleep :D. And I would be the one watching my younger brother sleep. It had become less and less difficult as I got used to it. Getting used to the late night snacks stolen from the fridge, the books(fiction and non-fiction alike) which were my best friends and my imagination. Imagination - day dreaming should be the term but I find it very inappropriate. Night dreaming? This term is useless at best. Everyone dreams at night right? Fantasy sounds better.

Much thanks to my curiosity, I gathered there is a circadian rhythm that tells the body when to sleep, eat and wake up. Mostly feedback mechanisms that sense sunlight, temperature, stress etc. I wonder if my professor of the Advanced level course on Control Systems I take should look at this. It doesn't need a controls prof to understand the controllers is running haywire. Of course, the What? and the Why? will perhaps be a lot harder to answer. Now I shall pause this stream of thoughts and get back to the the "Midnight Sun" by Stephenie Meyer...

4:15 AM

The novel's interesting. Fiction has always amazed me. Especially the fantastic and the supernatural. The cause for this indulgence is perhaps just the hope of something different, different than what the world had offered to me till now. Again it is a strange hobby for someone who feels revulsion towards the beliefs that are not proven completely. Most of the times, people find me annoying when I point out that what they believe is true is just a belief and not a fact... yet. Like belief in religion, avoiding cutting nails on the tuesdays, avoiding rahukalam while going out, turning back if you see a cat cross your path and definitely turning back if it's a black one, avoiding non-vegetarian foods on thursdays etc. The list seems endless. Some of them are downright foolish beliefs. Some of them are unproven and intricately laced with the mysterious and the unknown-

An interruption as a I glance at my notes and the things-to-do-today list. I have a class for two hours starting at 8 AM and one hour at 1 PM. Should I try to sleep again? The morning two hours should be easy if I don't sleep till then. The 1 PM class should be the harder thing to endure and more importantly to attend on time. Sleepless nights and heavy lunches spell doom to the productivity of afternoon schedules. Usually Thursdays and Fridays irritate me because of the afternoon schedules. But today should be good. I have slept for 13 hours in the last two nights. That, by experience means that I can last till the tonight. At times, I really feel like changing the 24-hour to make it 72 hours or something of that sort. Anyway, now for a little indulgence... something different.

Slices of time

t=0, t=0+e, t=0+2e, ...

It is all about awareness of different slices of time. Everything is still at each instant. Awareness just moves from one slice of time to another. Non-living beings are things that are without this sense of awareness. Living beings usually can only sense one slice of time at a time. Simultaneous awareness of more than one slice of time would cause terrible confusion from which the only way out is stopping the awareness as it becomes too overwhelming to deal with.

What if you don't resort to the state where you run away from awareness? What if you are prepared; armed with the knowledge that reason, harmony and clarity will be lost once you become aware of more than one instances of time. Maybe, you can be prepared to see that which only few have seen.

Dreams are an indicator of the potential of simultaneous awareness. They are but a leap towards the aspect of multiple sensations of time. But, dreams are often forgotten. They are termed as unreal because the awareness is inconsistent with the state of slice of time that a human is more readily aware of. What if dreams were awareness of a state of a different slice of time. Would you then call them real?

What is real? Only the awareness of states that make sense together? Only those that
are consistent with each other?

Is it that, missing the finer slices of time that would induce a sense of consistency of the "unreal" dreams, is sufficient to call an instance of time as unreal?

The slices of time are pre-determined and free will is just an illusion. You are only here to sense the instances of time, not to change the state of the slice of time. But then, it is much difficult to convince a man who is blinded by the illusion of freewill, that there is no reason, no greater purpose and no significant meaning. The sense of nothingness is too hard to endure. For we all have been brought up with ideals, morals and ethics. That there is a greater purpose that we are supposed to serve.

The only thing there is to learn, is perhaps, that there is nothing to learn.