CHAPTER 5

The Brain’s Role in All of This

Cortisol versus Dopamine

It would be nice to think of our personality traits, emotions, and talents as esoteric, cabalistic superpowers, which we are magically and mysteriously gifted with by the miracle of evolution but unfortunately the truth is far more pretenseless. Like it or not, our character is not much more than the manifestation and result of a series of chemical reactions (de Groot et al. 2012).

The chemicals that are released by our brains are done so to help the brain communicate with itself. These neurotransmitters can be thought of as the messengers of the brain, whose job it is to leap from one of the trillion or so neurons in our brain to the next, carrying with them important messages ...

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