How to calm down an overstimulated brain

If you've ever tried to go on a calorie-controlled diet or do a “digital detox’, you'll likely have experienced the high-stakes battle between willpower and temptation.

- Helen Coffey, The Independent

This capitulation to our base impulses is often framed, in mainstream culture, as weakness. We should be able to exercise enough self-control to put our phones aside or turn down the offer of a free cookie with our morning coffee. But what if our inability to stop doing things that are bad for us wasn't really our fault at all? What if our core biological instincts were being manipulated?

That's the conclusion that Nicklas Brendborg, a Danish biotech researcher, has come to. His upcoming book, Super Stimulated, explores the power of what have been dubbed “supernormal stimuli” or “superstimuli”. These are, in short, exaggerations of what an animal is naturally attracted to: “a stimulus that is a bigger, brighter or stronger version than the naturally occurring option”.