The Molecule of More

But whatever his weight in pounds, 
shillings, and ounces, 
He always seems bigger 
Because of his bounces.
“And that’s the whole poem,” he said. “Do you like it, Piglet?”
“All except the shillings,” said Piglet. “I don’t think they 
ought to be there.”
“They wanted to come in after the pounds,” explained 
Pooh, “so I let them. It is the best way to write poetry, letting 
things come.”

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CREATIVITY AND MADNESS
There may be chaos inside our heads that requires taming by the more 
logical parts of the brain, but there is also treasure. Whether or not you 
find that “shillings” improves Pooh’s poem, one of the cardinal rules of
creative writing is to turn off your inner censor when creating the first 
draft. If you’re lucky, things will tumble out from your unconscious that 
will resonate in the unconscious of your readers, and your story will 
strike deep.
Here is a quotation from a schizophrenic patient that illustrates a 
more pathological tendency to “let things come.”
I got TV tooth, they call it. TV tooth is when they surprise 
you and put needles in your skull, and they listen to you for 
years if you know it or not. I didn’t know it. They have this 
really fantastic, expensive equipment. They said to me, hey, we 
can check your head for, uh, if a bump shows up bruising, and 
the electricity is a little different across the top of your scalp, 
we’ll guarantee social security for that injury or on its own. It’s 
like cerebral palsy.
In this situation the speaker is unable to hold anything back. As thoughts 
come into his head, they are immediately translated into words with 
little processing. Normally, we pick and choose the things we say. We 
do this to censor unacceptable or illogical speech, but also to finish one 
thought before we begin the next. A close reading of the quotation 
makes it possible to get a general sense of what the speaker is saying, 
but it’s hard.
With one thought rapidly taking the place of another, and a limited 
ability to hold the thoughts back, expression becomes highly disorga-
nized. A less severe form of this type of jumping around is called tan-
gentiality, in which the speaker leaps from one thought to another, but 
in a way that makes sense. For example, “I can’t wait to go to Ocean 
City. They’ve got the best margaritas there. I have to find a place to 
get my car fixed this afternoon. Where are you going for lunch?” We 
often speak this way when we’re excited. Desire dopamine gets revved 

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THE MOLECULE OF MORE
up, and overwhelms control dopamine’s more logical approach to 
communication.
At the far end of the spectrum is word salad, the most severe man-
ifestation of out-of-control speech. In this case there is so much disor-
ganization that there appears to be no sense to the utterance at all; for 
example, “How are you feeling this morning?” “Hospital pencils and 
ink newspaper critical care mother almost there.”
They’re selling postcards of the hanging 
They’re painting the passports brown 
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors 
The circus is in town
—“Desolation Row,” Bob Dylan
Like people with mental illness, creative people such as artists, poets, 
scientists, and mathematicians will, at times, experience their thoughts 
running free. Creative thinking requires people to let go of the conven-
tional interpretations of the world in order to see things in a brand-new 
way. In other words, they must break apart their preconceived models 
of reality. But what is a model, and why do we build them?
A WORLD BEYOND THE SENSES
Material things, objects in the H&N peripersonal space, can be expe-
rienced with all five senses. As an object moves away from us, from the 
peripersonal H&N to the extrapersonal dopamine, our ability to per-
ceive it drops off one sensory modality at a time. First taste goes, then 
touch. As the thing moves farther away we lose our ability to smell it, 
hear it, and finally to see it. That’s when things get interesting. How do 
we perceive something that is so far away that we can’t even see it? We 
use our imagination.

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CREATIVITY AND MADNESS
Models are imaginary representations of the world that we build in 
order to better understand it. In some ways model building is like latent 
inhibition. Models contain only the elements of the environment that 
the model builder believes are essential. Other details are discarded. 
That makes the world easier to comprehend and, later, to imagine a 
variety of ways it might be manipulated for maximum benefit. Model 
building isn’t something we’re aware of. The brain builds models auto-
matically as we go about our day, and updates them as we learn new 
things.
Models not only simplify our conception of the world; they also 
allow us to abstract, to take specific experiences and use them to craft 
broad, general rules. From this we can predict and deal with situations 
we’ve never encountered before. I may never have seen a Ferrari, but 
as soon as I do, I know it’s for driving. I don’t have to examine it, and 
run through all the different things I might do with it. It would be par-
alyzing if I had to do that with every car I encountered. Based on my 
experience with real cars, I built a model of an abstract car. If a car I’ve 
never seen before fits the general outlines of my abstract conception, I 
can quickly classify it and know that it’s made for driving.
Recognizing a car may seem trivial, but model building also helps 
us with the most cosmic abstractions. Watching how real objects moved 
led Newton to develop his abstract law of universal gravitation, which 
not only predicts how apples fall from trees, but also the movements of
planets, stars, and galaxies.
MENTAL TIME TRAVEL
Models can be helpful when we need to choose among a number of
different options. They allow us to run through different scenarios in 
our imagination in order to select the best one. For instance, if I need 
to get from Washington, DC, to New York City I could take the train 
or the bus, or I could fly. To decide which will be fastest, most com-
fortable, or most convenient, I experience each option in my imagina-
tion, and then, based on my inner experience, I make my choice in the 

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THE MOLECULE OF MORE
real world. This process is called mental time travel. Using imagination, 
we project ourselves into various possible futures, mentally experience 
them, then decide how we’re going to get the most out of what we 
see—how we’re going to maximize our resources, whether it’s a roomy 
seat, a cheap ticket, or a fast ride.
Mental time travel is a powerful tool of the dopamine system. It 
allows us to experience a possible, though presently unreal, future as 
if we were there. Mental time travel depends on models because we 
make predictions regarding situations we haven’t yet experienced. How 
would my life be different if I bought this new dishwasher? What sorts 
of problems might an astronaut face if he traveled to Mars? What 
would happen if I ran that red light?
Mental time travel is in constant use because it’s the mechanism 
for making every conscious choice in life. To the brain, each deliberate 
choice about the future is a matter for the dopamine system and the 
models it has created, whether you are deciding what to order at Burger 
King or the president is deciding whether to start a war. Mental time 
travel is responsible for every “next step” in our lives.
HOW DID I END UP WITH SUCH A 
CRUMMY MODEL, AND CAN I FIX IT?