Andrew Huberman· PhD
Testosterone makes effort feel good.
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The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
Testosterone makes effort feel good.
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The major (neural) effect of testosterone is that it makes effort feel good.
Testosterone makes effort feel good
The major effect of testosterone on the brain (of both males and females) is to make effort feel good.
The major effect of testosterone on the brain is that it *makes effort feel good*.
a major effect of testosterone (in all people) is to make effort feel good.
such that testosterone tends to activate amygdala circuitry for inducing states of mind and body that are more action based and indeed in animals and in humans, testosterone application and activation of this corticomedial amygdala pathway will make animals and humans lean into effort.
It is fair to say that testosterone has the net effect of making effort feel good, or at least increasing the threshold at which effort feels bad or unsustainable. And it does that by way of changing the activity or the threshold for activation of brain structures, like the amygdala and other brain structures associated with anxiety.
testosterone application and activation of this corticomedial amygdala pathway will make animals and humans lean into effort. This is why I say testosterone makes effort feel good, or at least biases the organism toward leaning into challenge.
And so there's some interesting imaging there. I'd love to chat more about the cholesterol pathway, and I know this is a huge landscape as well, but I think we're doing a good job of diving in deep, but not getting stuck in the underlying currents at all.
one of the major functions of testosterone in the brain is to make effort feel good
I think the major effect also could be described as it makes effort feel good
testosterone makes effort feel good and what type of effort feels good depends on a lot of complex features within within us as humans
it it's clearly doing something very powerful. It's it's shifting the way that certain neural circuits work, adjusting the gain on the amydala, as you described.
at the level of the brain, it makes effort feel good.