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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 -
Annals of the New York Academy of... Feb 2019Today, we see a growing concern for the quality of life of nonhuman animals and an accompanying call for viable means of assessing how well animals thrive. Past research... (Review)
Review
Today, we see a growing concern for the quality of life of nonhuman animals and an accompanying call for viable means of assessing how well animals thrive. Past research focused on minimizing negatives such as stress, while more recent endeavors strive to promote positives such as happiness. But what is animal happiness? Although often mentioned, the term lacks a clear definition. With recent advances in the study of animal emotion, current interest into positive rather than negative experiences, and the call for captive and domesticated animals to have good lives, the time is ripe to examine the concept of animal happiness. We draw from the human and animal literature to delineate a concept of animal happiness and propose how to assess it. We argue that animal happiness depends on how an individual feels generally-that is, a typical level of affect.
Topics: Animal Welfare; Animals; Happiness; Humans; Pleasure; Pleasure-Pain Principle; Quality of Life
PubMed: 30345570
DOI: 10.1111/nyas.13983 -
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 -
British Journal of Anaesthesia Mar 2020
Topics: Humans; Naloxone; Pain; Pleasure; Remifentanil
PubMed: 31959385
DOI: 10.1016/j.bja.2019.11.027 -
Proceedings of the National Academy of... Jun 2013Music has existed in human societies since prehistory, perhaps because it allows expression and regulation of emotion and evokes pleasure. In this review, we present... (Review)
Review
Music has existed in human societies since prehistory, perhaps because it allows expression and regulation of emotion and evokes pleasure. In this review, we present findings from cognitive neuroscience that bear on the question of how we get from perception of sound patterns to pleasurable responses. First, we identify some of the auditory cortical circuits that are responsible for encoding and storing tonal patterns and discuss evidence that cortical loops between auditory and frontal cortices are important for maintaining musical information in working memory and for the recognition of structural regularities in musical patterns, which then lead to expectancies. Second, we review evidence concerning the mesolimbic striatal system and its involvement in reward, motivation, and pleasure in other domains. Recent data indicate that this dopaminergic system mediates pleasure associated with music; specifically, reward value for music can be coded by activity levels in the nucleus accumbens, whose functional connectivity with auditory and frontal areas increases as a function of increasing musical reward. We propose that pleasure in music arises from interactions between cortical loops that enable predictions and expectancies to emerge from sound patterns and subcortical systems responsible for reward and valuation.
Topics: Auditory Cortex; Auditory Perception; Frontal Lobe; Humans; Music; Nerve Net; Nucleus Accumbens; Pleasure
PubMed: 23754373
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1301228110 -
European Neuropsychopharmacology : the... May 2014A range of emotional and motivation impairments have long been clinically documented in people with schizophrenia, and there has been a resurgence of interest in... (Review)
Review
A range of emotional and motivation impairments have long been clinically documented in people with schizophrenia, and there has been a resurgence of interest in understanding the psychological and neural mechanisms of the so-called "negative symptoms" in schizophrenia, given their lack of treatment responsiveness and their role in constraining function and life satisfaction in this illness. Negative symptoms comprise two domains, with the first covering diminished motivation and pleasure across a range of life domains and the second covering diminished verbal and non-verbal expression and communicative output. In this review, we focus on four aspects of the motivation/pleasure domain, providing a brief review of the behavioral and neural underpinnings of this domain. First, we cover liking or in-the-moment pleasure: immediate responses to pleasurable stimuli. Second, we cover anticipatory pleasure or wanting, which involves prediction of a forthcoming enjoyable outcome (reward) and feeling pleasure in anticipation of that outcome. Third, we address motivation, which comprises effort computation, which involves figuring out how much effort is needed to achieve a desired outcome, planning, and behavioral response. Finally, we cover the maintenance emotional states and behavioral responses. Throughout, we consider the behavioral manifestations and brain representations of these four aspects of motivation/pleasure deficits in schizophrenia. We conclude with directions for future research as well as implications for treatment.
Topics: Animals; Anticipation, Psychological; Brain; Executive Function; Humans; Models, Psychological; Motivation; Pleasure; Schizophrenia; Schizophrenic Psychology
PubMed: 24461724
DOI: 10.1016/j.euroneuro.2013.06.007 -
PloS One 2022What is difficult is not usually pleasurable. Yet, for certain unfamiliar figurative language, like that which is common in poetry, while comprehension is often more...
What is difficult is not usually pleasurable. Yet, for certain unfamiliar figurative language, like that which is common in poetry, while comprehension is often more difficult than for more conventional language, it is in many cases more pleasurable. Concentrating our investigation on verb-based metaphors, we examined whether and to what degree the novel variations (in the form of verb changes and extensions) of conventional verb metaphors were both more difficult to comprehend and yet induced more pleasure. To test this relationship, we developed a set of 62 familiar metaphor stimuli, each with corresponding optimal and excessive verb variation and metaphor extension conditions, and normed these stimuli using both objective measures and participant subjective ratings. We then tested the pleasure-difficulty relationship with an online behavioral study. Based on Rachel Giora and her colleagues' 'optimal innovation hypothesis', we anticipated an inverse U-shaped relationship between ease and pleasure, with an optimal degree of difficulty, introduced by metaphor variations, producing the highest degree of pleasure when compared to familiar or excessive conditions. Results, however, revealed a more complex picture, with only metaphor extension conditions (not verb variation conditions) producing the anticipated pleasure effects. Individual differences in semantic cognition and verbal reasoning assessed using the Semantic Similarities Test, while clearly influential, further complicated the pleasure-difficulty relationship, suggesting an important avenue for further investigation.
Topics: Adult; Comprehension; Female; Humans; Male; Metaphor; Pleasure; Poetry as Topic; Reaction Time; Semantics
PubMed: 35148355
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263781 -
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 -
Current Opinion in Neurobiology Apr 2022Social touch-the affiliative skin-to-skin contact between individuals-can rapidly evoke emotions of comfort, pleasure, or calm, and is essential for mental and physical... (Review)
Review
Social touch-the affiliative skin-to-skin contact between individuals-can rapidly evoke emotions of comfort, pleasure, or calm, and is essential for mental and physical well-being. Physical isolation from social support can be devastating. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we observed a global increase in suicidal ideation, anxiety, domestic violence, and worsening of pre-existing physical conditions, alerting society to our need to understand the neurobiology of social touch and how it promotes normal health. Gaining a mechanistic understanding of how sensory neuron stimulation induces pleasure, calm, and analgesia may reveal untapped therapeutic targets in the periphery for treatment of anxiety and depression, as well as social disorders and traumas in which social touch becomes aversive. Bridging the gap between stimulation in the skin and positive affect in the brain-especially during naturally occurring social touch behaviors-remains a challenge to the field. However, with advances in mouse genetics, behavioral quantification, and brain imaging approaches to measure neuronal firing and neurochemical release, completing this mechanistic picture may be on the horizon. Here, we summarize some exciting new findings about social touch in mammals, emphasizing both the peripheral and central nervous systems, with attempts to bridge the gap between external stimulation and internal representations in the brain.
Topics: Animals; Brain; Humans; Mice; Pleasure; Social Behavior; Touch
PubMed: 35453001
DOI: 10.1016/j.conb.2022.102527 -
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