THE MOLECULE OF MOREdoesn’t do so well with broken toys and smashed-up dinner plates. The
entrepreneur who develops the next killer technology in his garage is
often surprised to find that the world isn’t beating a path to his door.
Success takes years of hard work and so many revisions to the original
idea that it’s barely recognizable by the time it gets to market. It’s not
enough to just imagine the future. To bring an idea to fruition we must
struggle with the uncompromising realities of the physical world. We
need not only knowledge but also tenacity. Dopamine, the chemical of
future success, is there to deliver.
THE CASE OF THE RESOLUTE RATSOne way to study tenacity in a laboratory is to measure how hard a
rat will work to get food, typically by counting the number of times
it will press a lever that sends a food pellet sliding down a chute into
its cage. By increasing the number of lever presses required to get the
food, scientists can find out whether their rats have the determination
to increase their efforts accordingly.
Researchers from the University of Connecticut wanted to see if they
could manipulate a rat’s tenacity by changing the activity of dopamine in
its brain. They put a cage full of rats on a reduced-calorie diet until the
animals lost 15 percent of their weight—for comparison, that’s like a typ-
ical adult losing about 25 pounds. After the rats were good and hungry,
the scientists gave them an opportunity to work for rewards in the form
of Bioserve tablets, delicious treats (to rats, at least) that come in a variety
of flavors, including chocolate marshmallow, piña colada, and bacon.
They began by dividing the rats into two groups. They designated
the first group as the control group, and did nothing to them beyond
the diet. As for the second group, the scientists injected a neurotoxin
into their brains that destroyed some of their dopamine cells. Then
they began the experiment.
The first experiment was easy. To receive a Bioserve treat, each
rat had to press the lever only one time. Since essentially no work
was needed—no tenacity required—this experiment established a