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Neuron May 2015Pleasure is mediated by well-developed mesocorticolimbic circuitry and serves adaptive functions. In affective disorders, anhedonia (lack of pleasure) or dysphoria... (Review)
Review
Pleasure is mediated by well-developed mesocorticolimbic circuitry and serves adaptive functions. In affective disorders, anhedonia (lack of pleasure) or dysphoria (negative affect) can result from breakdowns of that hedonic system. Human neuroimaging studies indicate that surprisingly similar circuitry is activated by quite diverse pleasures, suggesting a common neural currency shared by all. Wanting for reward is generated by a large and distributed brain system. Liking, or pleasure itself, is generated by a smaller set of hedonic hot spots within limbic circuitry. Those hot spots also can be embedded in broader anatomical patterns of valence organization, such as in a keyboard pattern of nucleus accumbens generators for desire versus dread. In contrast, some of the best known textbook candidates for pleasure generators, including classic pleasure electrodes and the mesolimbic dopamine system, may not generate pleasure after all. These emerging insights into brain pleasure mechanisms may eventually facilitate better treatments for affective disorders.
Topics: Animals; Brain; Humans; Pleasure
PubMed: 25950633
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2015.02.018 -
The Journal of Sexual Medicine Jan 2022BDSM is an abbreviation used to reference the concepts of bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism, enacted by power exchanges between...
INTRODUCTION
BDSM is an abbreviation used to reference the concepts of bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism, enacted by power exchanges between consensual partners. In recent years, attention has shifted from the idea of BDSM as a pathological and tabooed niche practice towards viewing BDSM as a healthy form of intimacy.
AIM
This systematic review brings together all existing literature on the biology of BDSM and places it in a broader biological context.
METHODS
A systematic search was conducted on PubMed, Web of Science and PsycARTICLES, of which 10 articles are included and discussed in this systematic review.
RESULTS
There is evidence for cortisol changes in submissives as a result of a BDSM interaction, suggesting involvement of the physiological stress system. Endocannabinoid changes implicate the pleasure and reward system. In dominants, this biologically measured pleasure seemed to be dependent on power play rather than pain play. Testosterone and oxytocin are also implicated in BDSM, though their role is less evident. Research into brain region activity patterns related to BDSM interest suggests a role for the parietal operculum and ventral striatum in the context of the pleasure and reward system, the primary and secondary somatosensory cortex in the context of pain perception, empathy-related circuits such as the anterior insula, anterior midcingulate cortex and sensorimotor cortex and the left frontal cortex in the context of social and sexual interactions. Pain thresholds are shown to be higher in submissive individuals and a BDSM interaction may cause pain thresholds to rise in submissives as well.
CONCLUSION
BDSM interactions are complex and influenced by several psychological, social and biological processes. Though research is limited, there is emerging evidence for an interaction between several biological systems involved in these types of interests and activities. This means there is an important role for future research to replicate and supplement current results. Wuyts E, Morrens M. The Biology of BDSM: A Systematic Review. J Sex Med 2022;19:144-157.
Topics: Biology; Humans; Masochism; Pleasure; Sadism; Sexual Behavior
PubMed: 34876387
DOI: 10.1016/j.jsxm.2021.11.002 -
Current Biology : CB May 2017The experience of beauty is a pleasure, but common sense and philosophy suggest that feeling beauty differs from sensuous pleasures such as eating or sex. Immanuel Kant...
The experience of beauty is a pleasure, but common sense and philosophy suggest that feeling beauty differs from sensuous pleasures such as eating or sex. Immanuel Kant [1, 2] claimed that experiencing beauty requires thought but that sensuous pleasure can be enjoyed without thought and cannot be beautiful. These venerable hypotheses persist in models of aesthetic processing [3-7] but have never been tested. Here, participants continuously rated the pleasure felt from a nominally beautiful or non-beautiful stimulus and then judged whether they had experienced beauty. The stimuli, which engage various senses, included seeing images, tasting candy, and touching a teddy bear. The observer reported the feelings that the stimulus evoked. The time course of pleasure, across stimuli, is well-fit by a model with one free parameter: pleasure amplitude. Pleasure amplitude increases linearly with the feeling of beauty. To test Kant's claim of a need for thought, we reduce cognitive capacity by adding a "two-back" task to distract the observer's thoughts. The distraction greatly reduces the beauty and pleasure experienced from stimuli that otherwise produce strong pleasure and spares that of less-pleasant stimuli. We also find that strong pleasure is always beautiful, whether produced reliably by beautiful stimuli or just occasionally by sensuous stimuli. In sum, we confirm Kant's claim that only the pleasure associated with feeling beauty requires thought and disprove his claim that sensuous pleasures cannot be beautiful.
Topics: Beauty; Cognition; Emotions; Female; Humans; Male; Pleasure; Sensation; Thinking; Visual Perception; Young Adult
PubMed: 28502660
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.04.018 -
Acta Psychologica Sep 2021Many philosophers and psychologists have made claims about what is felt in an experience of beauty. Here, we test how well these claims match the feelings that people...
Many philosophers and psychologists have made claims about what is felt in an experience of beauty. Here, we test how well these claims match the feelings that people report while looking at an image, or listening to music, or recalling a personal experience of beauty. We conducted ten experiments (total n = 851) spanning three nations (US, UK, and India). Across nations and modalities, top-rated beauty experiences are strongly characterized by six dimensions: intense pleasure, an impression of universality, the wish to continue the experience, exceeding expectation, perceived harmony in variety, and meaningfulness. Other frequently proposed beauty characteristics - like surprise, desire to understand, and mind wandering - are uncorrelated with feeling beauty. A typical remembered beautiful experience was active and social like a family holiday - hardly ever mentioning beauty - and only rarely mentioned art, unlike the academic emphasis, in aesthetics, on solitary viewing of art. Our survey aligns well with Kant and the psychological theories that emphasize pleasure, and reject theories that emphasize information seeking.
Topics: Beauty; Emotions; Esthetics; Humans; Music; Pleasure
PubMed: 34246875
DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103365 -
Games For Health Journal Dec 2015
Topics: Games, Recreational; Humans; Pleasure; Video Games
PubMed: 26509939
DOI: 10.1089/g4h.2015.0070 -
The International Journal of... Jun 2022The EPF 35th Annual Conference will be held in Vienna in July 2022 after it was postponed in 2020 due to the pandemic. All the greater is the pleasure to welcome you to...
The EPF 35th Annual Conference will be held in Vienna in July 2022 after it was postponed in 2020 due to the pandemic. All the greater is the pleasure to welcome you to the EPF Congress with the theme of Ideals this summer. The Vienna Psychoanalytical Society (WPV, Wiener Psychoanalytische Vereinigung) and the Vienna Psychoanalytical Association (WAP, Wiener Arbeitskreis für Psychoanalyse) would like to extend a warm invitation and welcome to Vienna, the birthplace of Psychoanalysis.
Topics: Humans; Pandemics; Pleasure; Psychoanalysis; Psychotherapy; Societies
PubMed: 35856151
DOI: 10.1080/00207578.2022.2068779 -
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Apr 2020Can people track several pleasures? In everyday life, pleasing stimuli rarely appear in isolation. Yet, experiments on aesthetic pleasure usually present only one image...
Can people track several pleasures? In everyday life, pleasing stimuli rarely appear in isolation. Yet, experiments on aesthetic pleasure usually present only one image at a time. Here, we ask whether people can reliably report the pleasure of either of two images seen in a single glimpse. Participants (N = 13 in the original; +25 in the preregistered replication) viewed 36 Open Affective Standardized Image Set (OASIS) images that span the entire range of pleasure and beauty. On each trial, the observer saw two images, side by side, for 200 ms. An arrow cue pointed, randomly, left, right, or bidirectionally. Left or right indicated which image (the target) to rate while ignoring the other (the distractor); bidirectional requested rating the combined pleasure of both images. In half the blocks, the cue came before the images (precuing). Otherwise, it came after (postcuing). Precuing allowed the observer to ignore the distractor, while postcuing demanded tracking both images. Finally, we obtained single-pleasure ratings for each image shown alone. Our replication confirms the original study. People have unbiased access to their felt pleasure from each image and the average of both. Furthermore, the variance of the observer's report is similar whether reporting the pleasure of one image or the average pleasure of two. The undiminished variance for reports of the average pleasure of two images indicates either that the underlying pleasure variances are highly correlated, or, more likely, that the variance arises in the common reporting process. In brief, observers can faithfully track at least two visual pleasures.
Topics: Adult; Beauty; Esthetics; Female; Humans; Male; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Pleasure; Young Adult
PubMed: 31898260
DOI: 10.3758/s13423-019-01695-6 -
Handbook of Clinical Neurology 2021The hypocretins/orexins were discovered in 1998. Within 2 years, this led to the discovery of the cause of human narcolepsy, a 90% loss of hypothalamic neurons... (Review)
Review
The hypocretins/orexins were discovered in 1998. Within 2 years, this led to the discovery of the cause of human narcolepsy, a 90% loss of hypothalamic neurons containing these peptides. Further work demonstrated that these neurons were not simply linked to waking. Rather these neurons were active during pleasurable behaviors in waking and were silenced by aversive stimulation. This was seen in wild-type mice, rats, cats, and dogs. It was also evident in humans, with increased Hcrt release during pleasurable activities and decreased release, to the levels seen in sleep, during pain. We found that human heroin addicts have, on average, an increase of 54% in the number of detectable Hcrt neurons compared to "control" human brains and that these Hcrt neurons are substantially smaller than those in control brains. We found that in mice, chronic morphine administration induced the same changes in Hcrt neuron number and size. Our studies in the mouse allowed us to determine the specificity, dose response relations, time course of the change in the number of Hcrt neurons, and that the increased number of Hcrt neurons after opiates was not due to neurogenesis. Furthermore, we found that it took a month or longer for these anatomical changes in the mouse brain to return to baseline. Human narcoleptics, despite their prescribed use of several commonly addictive drugs, do not show significant evidence of dose escalation or substance use disorder. Similarly, mice in which the peptide has been eliminated are resistant to addiction. These findings are consistent with the concept that an increased number of Hcrt neurons may underlie and maintain opioid or cocaine use disorders.
Topics: Animals; Cats; Dogs; Humans; Hypothalamus; Mice; Narcolepsy; Neurons; Orexins; Pleasure; Rats
PubMed: 34225941
DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-820107-7.00022-7 -
Journal of Morphology Jan 2023The definition of homology and its application to reproductive structures, external genitalia, and the physiology of sexual pleasure has a tortuous history. While...
The definition of homology and its application to reproductive structures, external genitalia, and the physiology of sexual pleasure has a tortuous history. While nowadays there is a consensus on the developmental homology of genital and reproductive systems, there is no agreement on the physiological translation, or the evolutionary origination and roles, of these structural correspondences and their divergent histories. This paper analyzes the impact of evolutionary perspectives on the homology concept as applied to the female orgasm, and their consequences for the biological and social understanding of female sexuality and reproduction. After a survey of the history of pre-evolutionary biomedical views on sexual difference and sexual pleasure, we examine how the concept of sexual homology was shaped in the new phylogenetic framework of the late 19th century. We then analyse the debates on the anatomical locus of female pleasure at the crossroads of theories of sexual evolution and new scientific discourses in psychoanalysis and sex studies. Moving back to evolutionary biology, we explore the consequences of neglecting homology in adaptive explanations of the female orgasm. The last two sections investigate the role played by different articulations of the homology concept in evolutionary developmental explanations of the origin and evolution of the female orgasm. These include the role of sexual, developmental homology in the byproduct hypothesis, and a more recent hypothesis where a phylogenetic, physiological concept of homology is used to account for the origination of the female orgasm. We conclude with a brief discussion on the social implications for the understanding of female pleasure derived from these different homology frameworks.
Topics: Female; Animals; Orgasm; Phylogeny; Pleasure; Reproduction; Biology
PubMed: 36533733
DOI: 10.1002/jmor.21544 -
General Dentistry 2023
Topics: Humans; Goals; Pleasure
PubMed: 36825964
DOI: No ID Found