How Corporations Changed Our Brains

Dr. Robert Lustig, professor of pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology and a member of the Institute for Health Policy Studies at University of California, San Francisco, joins us to discuss his new book, The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains. He looks at how dopamine, the reward neurotransmitter, has evolved to overwhelm serotonin, the contentment neurotransmitter that tells our brains we’re satisfied. Lustig argues this happened over decades as our government promoted temptations like sugar and drugs, which collided with our increasingly stressful lifestyles. Lustig believes these factors have created an ever increasing culture of addiction and depression.

Note: Jonathan Capehart guest-hosted this segment of "The Leonard Lopate Show."