I&#x27;ve noticed a strong pop-psych trend these days of referring to one&#x27;s own feelings or experiences in terms of neurotransmitters. e.g. &quot;I&#x27;m hooked on the dopamine rush of such-and-such activity,&quot; &quot;I&#x27;m feeling blue today, my serotonin must be low,&quot; etc.<p>This drives me crazy. It&#x27;s pure pseudoscience, and I hear it from people who should know better. Scientifically, we have very little idea what chemicals are actually behind different subjective feelings&#x2F;moods&#x2F;whatever. Everyone would love to believe that the brain operates in a simple, intuitive fashion, with one chemical for joy, one chemical for sadness, one chemical for anger, etc., but the reality is <i>way</i> more complex and nuanced.<p>For example, even something well-studied like dopamine, which has been strongly linked with the brain&#x27;s addiction circuitry, doesn&#x27;t necessarily stimulate any sort of direct pleasurable feeling as people often infer. It seems to work in a much subtler way, modulating learning, attention, and goal-seeking behavior. A recent study found that it doesn&#x27;t even necessarily spike when good things happen, but tends to increase in response to unexpected events, good or bad.