Lately I’ve been composing a piano sonata that I’m pretty happy with (so far.) This morning, I was eating breakfast and thinking about it and I got pretty excited about working on the tune – I was raring (sic?) to go, so to speak. I managed to get a little work in after breakfast, then had to do some shit, and here I am now – a bit after lunch – and while I have the free time, I’m not as amped up to work on the song. It feels more like “work” now.

I’m describing an experience everyone has had thousands of time. One minute you’re hot to go, the next you’re not. There’s a lot of conventional wisdom and psychobabble that describes this sort of thing – “You’re a morning person,” “You wake up refreshed and tire after lunch.” But what does that really mean? I think we can look to neuroscience to describe this in more detailed, chemical terms. I’m guessing here, but I suspect that I have more dopamine – the neurotransmitter associated with anticipation and reward (often blamed for gambling addiction) – in my brain in the morning.

That opens up an interesting idea: Could I induce this excited, “I want to work on my project” state in my brain by consuming more dopamine? Maybe. But where does one get more dopamine? From other people’s brains of course! As such, it seems quite sensible that I should kidnap homeless children off the street, house them in an attic and run an IV type connection from their brains to mine. When my excitement flags I could simply press a button and have more hot, fresh dopamine delivered to my brain.

Another possibility: simply carving open the heads of these teenagers and sipping the dopamine out of their brains with a straw. More low tech, certainly, but no less effective.

There’s is a negative side to all this: dopamine increases are associated with schizophrenia. Can you imagine me crazy?