ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, May 14, 1996 TAG: 9605140042
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: FRANK GREVE KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
NOTE: Below
CAMPAIGNING MAY SPUR THE RELEASE OF CHEMICALS in candidates' brains, with an exhilarating and perhaps addicting effect, some researchers suspect.
Here's a new answer to an old riddle: How are politicians like monkeys?
Brain researchers are finding that when dominant monkeys appear before their noisy and attentive followers, something goes off in their heads - literally. Experimenters say it's a gush of complex brain chemicals that stimulate elation, confidence and sensory arousal.
Do campaigning politicians get the same kind of rush when they appear before supporters? Many experts think so. Some of the chemicals released, they add, are probably addictive.
Campaigners are not surprised. But is the kick really addictive? ``I'm sure it is,'' said gadfly GOP presidential contender Pat Buchanan.
If Buchanan's right, campaign high-chasing may help answer other interesting riddles in American politics. Among them: why no-chance candidates become perennials, why some politicians never seek lower office, and why otherwise prudent business leaders throw away millions in races they can't win.
Getting high from campaigning, by Buchanan's account, requires a live crowd. Generally, the bigger the audience, the bigger the kick. The biggest, most enduring highs, he added, come only ``after you've actually beaten somebody'' by winning an election.
That's predictable. This isn't: Buchanan said campaign highs have enabled him to get by on three or four hours of sleep a night since December. Normally, he's an eight-hour sound sleeper.
Even what sleep Buchanan gets these days is so fitful, he said, that he's often up at 3 or 4 a.m. hunting for coffee with his security detail.
Other side effects he reports are beneficial: His arthritis twinges are gone. He hasn't had a cold for months.
Others' side effects: Bob Dole misplaces his appetite when campaigning. Bill Clinton gets flushed, can't calm down for a minute. Aides to Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., study his hotel receipts to see whether it took the campaigner two rental movies or three to get to sleep.
Among dominant vervet monkeys strutting their stuff, there's also an increase in lust. If campaigners feel that, they don't talk about it.
Otherwise, the physical symptoms that campaigners report jibe with what surges of brain chemicals do to primates in lab experiments. They're also consistent with a correlation in humans between high levels of certain brain chemicals and dominant competitors.
Involved are a whole family of natural stimulants called neurotransmitters, including serotonin, dopamine, epinephrine and others, that excite the pleasure centers of the brain and influence perception. As their levels rise, they tend to shift favorably the balance between anxiety and optimism, researchers have found. They influence diet, sleep cycles, sociability and sexuality.
Experimenters at the University of California at Los Angeles have found that the school's fraternity leaders, like top vervet monkeys, have higher levels of one key chemical - serotonin - in their blood than the others. So do human winners of competitive games, though not winners of lotteries in which chance determines the outcome.
High serotonin, which is the mood-controlling neurotransmitter regulated by Prozac, also has been found by University of Iowa experimenters to mark a politics-prone personality type called Machiavellians: people who like to manipulate and dominate others.
While there have been no comparable experiments on humans, a dominant vervet monkey's serotonin level falls when his status does. Restored to power, his serotonin rises again, said Dr. Michael Raleigh, a psychiatrist at UCLA's Brain Research Institute who has conducted serotonin-dominance studies.
Dominant monkeys are not usually the biggest or most aggressive, Raleigh noted. They fight less than low-serotonin subordinates, concentrate better, and are less impulsive, he reports. Like politicians, they're their group's best deal makers, coalition builders and peacemakers.
Significant increases in brain serotonin take weeks to accumulate and are durable; other brain chemicals surge and wane in minutes or hours.
Those short-term ups and downs, theorized Roger Masters of Dartmouth College, a leader in the emerging field of biopolitics, may explain why many campaigners report the same odd experience: that days crowded with events are less tiring than days with large gaps between them.
The power of a campaign high is clear from the longing of ex-politicians speaking of the buzz they miss.
``It kicks in like a runner's high,'' said defeated former Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, D-Pa., ``and gives you a feeling of optimism and purpose. It's exhilarating.''
Campaign highs are ``much more solid and enduring'' than any he ever got from liquor, recalled retired Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis. ``The feeling is more like when you get a compliment from someone you respect and admire.
``The crowd lifts you,'' he continued. ``They smile. They applaud. You say something funny and they laugh. It makes you feel terrific. You're happy. Expansive. You throw your shoulders back and say to yourself, `I've got it today!'''
When a campaigner's neurotransmitters kick in, oberservers are likely to notice a sudden, startling revival. ``I've seen it work a million times,'' said Richard Ben Cramer, author of ``What It Takes,'' a backstage chronicle of the presidential campaigners of 1988.
``Some guy flies in, sixth event of the day, so totally exhausted he can't tell you what state he's in, and he gets up to talk and it all pours back into him from the crowd. Reporters half his age are dragging and the guy'll be up there, just spellbinding.''
TV studio appearances just don't do it, even for disciplined performers like Ronald Reagan, according to Lou Cannon, Reagan's biographer.
``When Ronald Reagan was most down, they'd rev him up with live audiences,'' Cannon said, recalling a North Carolina primary 20 years ago when Reagan, after losing seven straight contests, stumped the state, found adoring crowds, and won.
Overnight, Cannon said, ``Reagan was ready to fly to Texas without an airplane.''
LENGTH: Long : 113 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICSby CNB