This is hidden brain. I'm Shankar Vedantin. It seems like the simplest choice in the world.

Given the option between pain and pleasure, we ought to choose pleasure.

Is it better to be hungry or full?

Better to be tired or alert?

Better to watch another episode of our favorite TV show or do the dishes?

It isn't just our own minds that tell us to choose the path of enjoyment and indulgence. Our friends remind us that life is short. Say no to desert or another round of drinks and

someone might call you a spoilsport. At Stanford University psychiatrist Anna Lemky has heard the same messages.

But as a scientist, she's also studied the way our brains balance, pain and pleasure.

The two sit on opposite ends of a neural seat. pain and the pleasure

opposite ends of a neural seesaw

and the brain constantly attempts to bring them into equilibrium

or what is known as homeostasis.

When we press down hard and often on the pleasure side of the

seasaw, triggering bursts of the neurotransmitter dopamine, Anna says the brain

automatically compensates by pressing down on the other side,

producing a dopamine deficit.

Over time, as people press down too much or too often on the pleasure side of the equation,

the brain compensates so forcefully that we start to walk around with a chronic dopamine deficit.

This can manifest as anxiety, irritability, and depression.

There is complex neurochemistry behind the process of homeostasis, but Anna has come up with a simple

way to visualize this.

When you press down on one side of the seesaw, imagine a bunch of gremlins inside your

...