The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good
David J. Linden
Language: English
Pages: 185
ISBN: 2:00080725
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
From the New York Times bestselling author comes a "hugely entertaining" (NPR.org) look at vice and virtue through cutting-edge science
As he did in his award-winning book The Accidental Mind, David J. Linden—highly regarded neuroscientist, professor, and writer—weaves empirical science with entertaining anecdotes to explain how the gamut of behaviors that give us a buzz actually operates. The Compass of Pleasure makes clear why drugs like nicotine and heroin are addictive while LSD is not, how fast food restaurants ensure that diners will eat more, why some people cannot resist the appeal of a new sexual encounter, and much more. Provocative and illuminating, this is a radically new and thorough look at the desires that define us.
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Traditional medicine and become a shaman himself. This was an elaborate and extended process that required him to live in near isolation in the jungle for a period of three years. During this time he was provided a strict traditional diet, consisting mostly of plantains and fish. He could eat some jungle fowl, but only the left breast—no other portion of the meat was allowed. Alcohol and sexual contact were strictly prohibited. His food was prepared and delivered to him by either a young girl or.
Biochemical functions of neurons and synaptic connections within the medial forebrain pleasure circuit. There are strong suggestions that these changes underlie many of the terrifying aspects of addiction, including tolerance (needing successively larger doses to get high), craving, withdrawal, and relapse. Provocatively, such persistent changes appear to be nearly identical to experience-and learning-driven changes in neural circuitry that are used to store memories in other brain regions. In.
Smoke cigarettes, we are being very effective trainers of our inner dog, creating a strong association between puffing and pleasure.17 Addiction can be defined as persistent, compulsive drug use in the face of increasingly negative life consequences. Addicts typically risk their health, families, careers, and friendships as they pursue their drugs of choice. Addiction doesn’t develop all at once, however, but proceeds in stages. While some drugs, like heroin, carry a high risk for addiction,.
Mature. During the period when the human brain is undergoing this extensive postnatal maturation, children are still undergoing cognitive and behavioral maturation. Thus while an orangutan or gray whale mother can raise her offspring successfully without paternal involvement, human single mothers in traditional societies are at a great disadvantage because their children remain so helpless for so long. It is the need to provide care for human children, with their huge, slowly maturing brains,.
Also worth recalling that there are some biochemical systems that might be engaged by a limited range of pleasurable behaviors. It would not be surprising if variation in the genes encoding oxytocin or its receptors might be relevant for sex addiction, but not other addictions. Similarly, variation in the genes encoding the hormone orexin or the neurotransmitter NPY (or their receptors or effectors), which are critical components of the appetite-regulation circuitry, might be relevant to food.