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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 -
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 -
Annals of the New York Academy of... Oct 2022Music, thanks to its strong evocative power, is considered a powerful mnemonic tool for both normal and clinical populations. However, the mechanisms underpinning the... (Review)
Review
Music, thanks to its strong evocative power, is considered a powerful mnemonic tool for both normal and clinical populations. However, the mechanisms underpinning the music-driven benefits on memory remain unclear. In memory research, reward dopaminergic signals have been highlighted as a major modulator of memory traces consolidation. Over the last years, via behavioral and pharmacological approaches, we have investigated the hypothesis that dopaminergic-dependent musical pleasure is a crucial mechanism underpinning music-driven memory benefits. Our results show that the pleasure felt during music listening, modulated by both the dopaminergic transmission and participants' sensitivity to music reward, can increase episodic memory performance for the music itself as well as for nonmusical-associated information. In this commentary paper, we aim to review the main findings obtained from three different studies, in order to discuss current advances and future directions in this research area.
Topics: Auditory Perception; Dopamine; Emotions; Humans; Music; Pleasure; Reward
PubMed: 35877116
DOI: 10.1111/nyas.14867 -
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 -
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews Jul 2019Experiencing pleasure and displeasure is a fundamental part of life. Hedonics guide behavior, affect decision-making, induce learning, and much more. As the positive and... (Review)
Review
Experiencing pleasure and displeasure is a fundamental part of life. Hedonics guide behavior, affect decision-making, induce learning, and much more. As the positive and negative valence of feelings, hedonics are core processes that accompany emotion, motivation, and bodily states. Here, the affective neuroscience of pleasure and displeasure that has largely focused on the investigation of reward and pain processing, is reviewed. We describe the neurobiological systems of hedonics and factors that modulate hedonic experiences (e.g., cognition, learning, sensory input). Further, we review maladaptive and adaptive pleasure and displeasure functions in mental disorders and well-being, as well as the experience of aesthetics. As a centerpiece of the Human Affectome Project, language used to express pleasure and displeasure was also analyzed, and showed that most of these analyzed words overlap with expressions of emotions, actions, and bodily states. Our review shows that hedonics are typically investigated as processes that accompany other functions, but the mechanisms of hedonics (as core processes) have not been fully elucidated.
Topics: Adaptation, Psychological; Affect; Anhedonia; Humans; Mental Disorders; Nucleus Accumbens; Pleasure; Prefrontal Cortex; Reward
PubMed: 31071361
DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.05.003 -
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 -
Alcohol and Alcoholism (Oxford,... Sep 2023To suggest a new paradigm for addictions.
AIM
To suggest a new paradigm for addictions.
METHODS
Consideration of relevant research findings and thought experiments.
RESULTS
Common mental motors leading to addictions are pleasure-seeking and hyperbolic discounting. The important point of the latter is that given two choices of future rewards, commonly one initially prefers the larger one available after a longer waiting time but despite this the smaller and sooner reward will be chosen when it becomes available. These are general biological properties, found at least in human beings, the rat, and the pigeon. If this continues it may create an unconscious habit, difficult to change. Several other risk factors for addictions are known, notably both externalizing and internalizing mental problems. Predisposing factors are likely to interact.
CONCLUSIONS
The above suggests a new paradigm for addictions. Pleasure provides temptations, hyperbolic discounting weakens the will. Habits emerge. Addictions seem to be a group of problems of its own kind, not diseases, because diseases do not bring about pleasure, and are not sought for pleasure.
Topics: Humans; Animals; Rats; Reward; Behavior, Addictive; Motivation; Pleasure; Risk Factors
PubMed: 37092272
DOI: 10.1093/alcalc/agad027 -
Journal of Sex Research Jul 2023Masturbation is one of the most common sexual behaviors in humans. It is also a phylogenetically widespread trait of various other mammalian and some non-mammalian... (Review)
Review
Masturbation is one of the most common sexual behaviors in humans. It is also a phylogenetically widespread trait of various other mammalian and some non-mammalian species. Several hypotheses have been proposed aiming to explain the function of masturbation in primates and other species. These were mainly based on observations of nonhuman primates such as rhesus macaques or bonobos and rodents such as African ground squirrels. Based on these observations various scholars suggested that masturbation improves ejaculate quality, decreases the risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections or is merely a by-product of sexual arousal and thus an alternate outlet to copulation. While these theories may explain some facets of masturbation in some species, they do not explain why masturbation is so widespread and has developed in various species as well as our hominid ancestors. Moreover, the research on which these theories are based is scarce and heavily focused on male masturbation, while female masturbation remains largely unexplored. This sex difference may be responsible for the one-sided theorizing that attributes a specific biological benefit to masturbation. We propose that the widespread prevalence of masturbation in the animal kingdom may be better explained by viewing masturbation as a primarily self-reinforcing behavior that promotes pleasure both in human and in nonhuman species.
Topics: Animals; Female; Male; Humans; Masturbation; Macaca mulatta; Sexual Behavior; Pleasure; Mammals
PubMed: 35316107
DOI: 10.1080/00224499.2022.2044446 -
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