Ice chips, death and calm

Seeman talks about his father. Since he was five, his father taught him about his area of scientific inquiry: brain dopamine. Dopamine, which is released when you encounter something delightful, is the pleasure molecule, the molecule of elation, risk, reward, motivation and movement, learning and memory, and of addiction and psychosis. It confers salience to an experience or a sensation. His father's laboratory had isolated and cloned several of the receptors for dopamine. That was his life's work. Even as his dad was dying, as he lay in bed in probable pain, unable to swallow regular food or even nod his head, his father touched his hand again and again to calm him as he sought to care for him. His father taught him about the value of calm in the face of the fearful known and the still more fearful unknown.