entities 
entities
More on drugs and giving
Curiously, some accounts of the brain science research I cited didn’t mention the fact that giving works in the same brain centers as drugs, but only cited the link to food and sex. Curious, I purchased the actual report and in fact, giving activates the same brain centers as sex, drugs, food and greed. Even more interesting, they actually got a picture of the brain at work in giving, through the magic of FMRI. 
You know what they found? When you feel a warm glow from giving, that’s because your brain is warm and glowing. Rowena Young and I are talking about doing a story or a paper on the impact for the social capital markets of this research. For some odd reason, people have for a while been trying to make giving look like investing. Rather than telling the story into the way the brain works, at the deep level of passion, they have been trying to emulate the shallow, rational part of the brain that is about computation. Here is a picture of the warm glow from giving.
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April 13th, 2007 um 8:23 am
Peter Karoff, in the podcast interview I taped with him talked about how you must bring logic and emotion to the table saying:
“Well I think the two [logic and emotion] are really joined at the hip. It is, in fact, the heart and the mind combined that make for transformational philanthropy. And I think if it gets too emotional then it — at the end of the day — is not satisfying, because you haven’t therefore put in place the kinds of processes that will allow you to know whether, in fact, you’ve made a difference.
At the same time, if you’re too linear, if you’re driven by metrics only, and driven only by a kind of a stripped business-speak type process, that doesn’t give you the emotional sense. So I don’t view them at all as competitive or mutually exclusive. I think they reinforce each other.”
April 13th, 2007 um 10:16 pm
good point, sean (and peter). i think they do reinforce each other. and being zealous about either one is only using part of the brain.
April 15th, 2007 um 4:56 pm
Kevin, when you get the paper written, please e-mail a copy to Jason Marsh, Editor at Greater Good. This is just the stuff he likes to keep track of and may be interested in publishing.
April 15th, 2007 um 6:57 pm
thanks tom. will do. no idea of a timetable, just a commitment
April 18th, 2007 um 2:19 pm
[…] Give a little bit… When you feel a warm glow from giving, that’s because your brain is warm and glowing.Xigi.net uncovers research and FMRI’s that show how giving activates the same brain centers as sex, drugs, food and greed. (tags: brain consciousness giving altruism philanthropy drugs greed sex pleasure food fMRI imaging warm glowing) […]