Pathological learning

My dog Ripley is addicted to a large blue plastic ball.  Too large to pick up, she will push is around with her nose until her nose is bloody and swollen and she is exhausted.

When you first see this, it’s funny.  As it goes on it becomes disturbing. I let her have the ball once or twice a year. I am working with my students.  Each time a student quickly recognizes what we are looking at.

“That’s addiction” one will explain.  “Look at that.  She’s obsessed”

And they are right.  When Ripley has that ball, she is gone. There is a crazed and absent look in her eye. She doesn’t look like she is playing or having a good time. When she is finished, she looks exhausted, not satisfied.  Compare this to how she behaves when she has found the subject when we are search and rescue training and wins her toy. Then she prances around parading her toy like a trophy.

But wait a day, or an hour,  and show her the ball and she will jump up and bark repeatedly. Her eyes will shine and anticipation of a huge reward.  She must remember the thrill of the fight with the ball and be unable to forsee that she can’t win.  Neuroscientists like Steven Hyman now talk about all types of addiction as “extreme memory” or “pathological learning”

 My students recognize themselves in Ripley. “That’s what I was like with computers,” says one.

“That’s me on oxy” says another.

Computers, oxy, meth, food, gambling, sex, anger, alcohol, whatever–the basic mechanism is the same. Whether it happens after just one or two exposures, or develops over a long period of time.  In those of us who are vulnerable, the end is the same–ADDICTION.  We have created an indelible, emotionally charged, learned response to a certain behavior or substance.

One day Ripley got the ball away from me outside. (We usually do this at the gym).  The school is on a hill, so the ball rolled away from her. It is fast. She is fast. I’m not. Before I knew it she was 100 yards away from me and we were moving away from the campus.  The students helped me get her back.  Everytime they would get close they would call her.

Ripley is a well trained Search and Rescue dog.  These were students who worked with her daily.  She would normally respond. She paid them absolutely no attention whatsoever.  When we eventually got her and the ball back. One said “Now I know what my mother must have felt like when I tuned her out.”

That is extreme learning. It happened the very first time I put that ball down in front of her.  Something about the way it moved triggered the pleasure or attention circuit in her brain, triggered a release of powerful neurotransmitters (the brain’s personal stash) and rewired her brain. On the spot. From that day forward, Ripley’s brain is different.  If I want to keep her attention, keep her off drugs,  we must avoid the big blue ball.