The Molecule of More

THE MOLECULE OF MORE

up, and overwhelms control dopamine’s more logical approach to
communication.
At the far end of the spectrum is word salad, the most severe man-
ifestation of out-of-control speech. In this case there is so much disor-
ganization that  there appears to  be  no  sense to  the  utterance at  all;  for 
example, “How are you feeling this morning?” “Hospital pencils and
ink newspaper critical care mother almost there.”

They’re selling postcards of the hanging

They’re painting the passports brown

The beauty parlor is filled with sailors

The circus is in town

—“Desolation Row,” Bob Dylan

Like people with mental illness, creative people such as artists, poets,

scientists, and mathematicians will, at times, experience their thoughts

running free. Creative thinking requires people to let go of the conven-

tional interpretations of the world in order to see things in a brand-new

way. In other words, they must break apart their preconceived models

of reality. But what is a model, and why do we build them?

A WORLD BEYOND THE SENSES

Material things, objects in the H&N peripersonal space, can be expe-
rienced with all  five  senses. As  an  object moves away from us,  from the 
peripersonal H&N to the extrapersonal dopamine, our ability to per-
ceive it drops off  one  sensory modality at  a  time. First taste goes, then 
touch. As the thing moves farther away we lose our ability to smell it,
hear it,  and  finally to  see  it.  That’s when things get  interesting. How do 
we perceive something that is so far away that we can’t even see it? We
use our imagination.