Pleasure

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Pleasure is a mental experience that humans and other conscious animals find enjoyable, positive, or worth seeking. It can be a part of other mental states such as happiness, entertainment, enjoyment, ecstasy and euphoria.

The experience of pleasure is subjective and different individuals experience different kinds and amounts of pleasure in the same situation.[citation needed]

Sources and types of pleasure[edit]

Many pleasurable experiences are associated with satisfying basic biological drives, such as eating, exercise, hygiene, sleep, and sex.[1] The appreciation of cultural artifacts and activities such as art, music, dancing, and literature is often pleasurable.[1]

Pleasure is sometimes subdivided into fundamental pleasures that are closely related to survival (food, sex, and social belonging) and higher-order pleasures (e.g., viewing art and altruism).[2]

Bentham listed 14 kinds of pleasure; sense, wealth, skill, amity, a good name, power, piety, benevolence, malevolence, memory, imagination, expectation, pleasures dependent on association, and the pleasures of relief.[3]

Some commentators see 'complex pleasures' including wit and sudden realisation,[4] and some see a wide range of pleasurable feelings.[5]

Formation of pleasure[edit]

See also: Affective neuroscience

Pleasure can often include sensory and psychological aspects.[6]

Neuroscience[edit]

Human reward system and hedonic hotspots[edit]

This section is an excerpt from Reward system § Pleasure centers[edit]

Pleasure is a component of reward, but not all rewards are pleasurable (e.g., money does not elicit pleasure unless this response is conditioned).[7] Stimuli that are naturally pleasurable, and therefore attractive, are known as intrinsic rewards, whereas stimuli that are attractive and motivate approach behavior, but are not inherently pleasurable, are termed extrinsic rewards.[7] Extrinsic rewards (e.g., money) are rewarding as a result of a learned association with an intrinsic reward.[7] In other words, extrinsic rewards function as motivational magnets that elicit "wanting", but not "liking" reactions once they have been acquired.[7]

The reward system contains pleasure centers or hedonic hotspots – i.e., brain structures that mediate pleasure or "liking" reactions from intrinsic rewards. As of October 2017, hedonic hotspots have been identified in subcompartments within the nucleus accumbens shell, ventral pallidum, parabrachial nucleus, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and insular cortex.[8][9][10] The hotspot within the nucleus accumbens shell is located in the rostrodorsal quadrant of the medial shell, while the hedonic coldspot is located in a more posterior region. The posterior ventral pallidum also contains a hedonic hotspot, while the anterior ventral pallidum contains a hedonic coldspot. Microinjections of opioids, endocannabinoids, and orexin are capable of enhancing liking in these hotspots.[8] The hedonic hotspots located in the anterior OFC and posterior insula have been demonstrated to respond to orexin and opioids, as has the overlapping hedonic coldspot in the anterior insula and posterior OFC.[10] On the other hand, the parabrachial nucleus hotspot has only been demonstrated to respond to benzodiazepine receptor agonists.[8]

Hedonic hotspots are functionally linked, in that activation of one hotspot results in the recruitment of the others, as indexed by the induced expression of c-Fos, an immediate early gene. Furthermore, inhibition of one hotspot results in the blunting of the effects of activating another hotspot.[8][10] Therefore, the simultaneous activation of every hedonic hotspot within the reward system is believed to be necessary for generating the sensation of an intense euphoria.[11]

Relationship of pleasure with reward system[edit]

While all pleasurable stimuli can be seen as rewards, some rewards do not evoke pleasure.[1]

Relationship of pleasure with motivational salience[edit]

Based upon the incentive salience model of reward – the attractive and motivational property of a stimulus that induces approach behavior and consummatory behavior[1] – an intrinsic reward has two components: a "wanting" or desire component that is reflected in approach behavior, and a "liking" or pleasure component that is reflected in consummatory behavior.[1]

Common mesocorticolimbic circuitry[edit]

Some research indicates that similar mesocorticolimbic circuitry is activated by quite diverse pleasures, suggesting a common neural currency.[12]

Status and outlook[edit]

Some commentators opine that our current understanding of how pleasure happens within us remains poor,[13][6] but that scientific advance gives optimism for future progress.[14]

Psychology[edit]

Study for Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm by William Etty, 1822

Psychological aspects of pleasure[edit]

The degree to which something or someone is experienced as pleasurable not only depends on its objective attributes (appearance, sound, taste, texture, etc.), but on beliefs about its history, about the circumstances of its creation, about its rarity, fame, or price, and on other non-intrinsic attributes, such as the social status or identity it conveys. For example, a sweater that has been worn by a celebrity is more desired than an otherwise identical sweater that has not, though considerably less so if it has been washed.[15] Another example was when Grammy-winning, internationally acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell played in the Washington D.C. subway for 43 minutes, attracting little attention from the 1,097 people who passed by, and earning about $59 in tips.[15][16][17] Paul Bloom describes these phenomena as arising from a form of essentialism.

Psychological approaches to pleasure motivation[edit]

Freud proposed the pleasure principle, describing it as a positive feedback mechanism that motivates the organism to recreate the situation it has just found pleasurable, and to avoid past situations that caused pain.[18]

Pleasure in relation to emotion[edit]

Pleasure is considered one of the core dimensions of emotion. It can be described as the positive evaluation that forms the basis for several more elaborate evaluations such as "agreeable" or "nice". As such, pleasure is an affect and not an emotion, as it forms one component of several different emotions.[19]

Pleasure in relation to pain[edit]

Pleasure is often regarded as a bipolar construct, meaning that the two ends of the spectrum from pleasure to suffering are mutually exclusive. That is part of the circumplex model of affect.[20] Yet, some lines of research suggest that people do experience pleasure and suffering at the same time, giving rise to so-called mixed feelings.[21][22][23]

Issues in experiencing pleasure[edit]

The clinical condition of being unable to experience pleasure from usually enjoyable activities is called anhedonia. An active aversion to obtaining pleasure is called hedonophobia.

Philosophy[edit]

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Hedonism
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Utilitarianism
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Various philosophical approaches to utilitarianism and hedonism advocate maximizing the amount of pleasure and minimizing the amount of suffering.

Hellenistic philosophy[edit]

The ancient Cyrenaics posited pleasure as the universal aim for all people. Later, Epicurus defined the highest pleasure as aponia (the absence of pain),[24] and pleasure as "freedom from pain in the body and freedom from turmoil in the soul".[25] According to Cicero (or rather his character Torquatus) Epicurus also believed that pleasure was the chief good and pain the chief evil.[26] The Pyrrhonist philosopher Aenesidemus claimed that following Pyrrhonism's prescriptions for philosophical skepticism produced pleasure.[27]

Medieval philosophy[edit]

In the 12th century, Razi's "Treatise of the Self and the Spirit" (Kitab al Nafs Wa’l Ruh) analyzed different types of pleasure- sensuous and intellectual, and explained their relations with one another. He concludes that human needs and desires are endless, and "their satisfaction is by definition impossible."[28]

Modern philosophy[edit]

The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer understood pleasure as a negative sensation, one that negates the usual existential condition of suffering.[29]

Not a uniquely human experience[edit]

See also: Reward system § Animals vs humans, and Animal sexual behaviour § Sex for pleasure

In the past, there has been debate as to whether pleasure is experienced by other animals rather than being an exclusive property of humankind; however, it is now known that animals do experience pleasure, as measured by objective behavioral and neural hedonic responses to pleasurable stimuli.[12]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e Schultz, Wolfram (July 2015). "Neuronal Reward and Decision Signals: From Theories to Data". Physiological Reviews. 95 (3): 853–951. doi:10.1152/physrev.00023.2014. PMC 4491543. PMID 26109341.
  2. ^ Kringelbach, Morten L. (2008-10-15). The Pleasure Center : Trust Your Animal Instincts: Trust Your Animal Instincts. Oxford University Press, US. ISBN 9780199717392.
  3. ^ Chapter V, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Bentham, 1789, http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/Philosophers/Bentham/principlesofMoralsAndLegislation.pdf#page30 https://www.utilitarianism.com/jeremy-bentham/index.html
  4. ^ Complex Pleasure: Forms of Feeling in German Literature, Stanley Corngold, Stanford Press, 1998
  5. ^ Smuts, Aaron (September 2011). "The feels good theory of pleasure". Philosophical Studies. 155 (2): 241–265. doi:10.1007/s11098-010-9566-4. S2CID 170258796.
  6. ^ a b Moccia, Lorenzo; Mazza, Marianna; Nicola, Marco Di; Janiri, Luigi (4 September 2018). "The Experience of Pleasure: A Perspective Between Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis". Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 12: 359. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2018.00359. PMC 6131593. PMID 30233347.
  7. ^ a b c d Schultz, Wolfram (July 2015). "Neuronal Reward and Decision Signals: From Theories to Data". Physiological Reviews. 95 (3): 853–951. doi:10.1152/physrev.00023.2014. PMC 4491543. PMID 26109341.
  8. ^ a b c d Berridge KC, Kringelbach ML (May 2015). "Pleasure systems in the brain". Neuron. 86 (3): 646–664. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2015.02.018. PMC 4425246. PMID 25950633. In the prefrontal cortex, recent evidence indicates that the [orbitofrontal cortex] OFC and insula cortex may each contain their own additional hot spots (D.C. Castro et al., Soc. Neurosci., abstract). In specific subregions of each area, either opioid-stimulating or orexin-stimulating microinjections appear to enhance the number of liking reactions elicited by sweetness, similar to the [nucleus accumbens] NAc and [ventral pallidum] VP hot spots. Successful confirmation of hedonic hot spots in the OFC or insula would be important and possibly relevant to the orbitofrontal mid-anterior site mentioned earlier that especially tracks the subjective pleasure of foods in humans (Georgiadis et al., 2012; Kringelbach, 2005; Kringelbach et al., 2003; Small et al., 2001; Veldhuizen et al., 2010). Finally, in the brainstem, a hindbrain site near the parabrachial nucleus of dorsal pons also appears able to contribute to hedonic gains of function (Söderpalm and Berridge, 2000). A brainstem mechanism for pleasure may seem more surprising than forebrain hot spots to anyone who views the brainstem as merely reflexive, but the pontine parabrachial nucleus contributes to taste, pain, and many visceral sensations from the body and has also been suggested to play an important role in motivation (Wu et al., 2012) and in human emotion (especially related to the somatic marker hypothesis) (Damasio, 2010).
  9. ^ Richard JM, Castro DC, Difeliceantonio AG, Robinson MJ, Berridge KC (November 2013). "Mapping brain circuits of reward and motivation: in the footsteps of Ann Kelley". Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 37 (9 Pt A): 1919–1931. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2012.12.008. PMC 3706488. PMID 23261404.
    Figure 3: Neural circuits underlying motivated 'wanting' and hedonic 'liking'.
  10. ^ a b c Castro, DC; Berridge, KC (24 October 2017). "Opioid and orexin hedonic hotspots in rat orbitofrontal cortex and insula". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 114 (43): E9125–E9134. doi:10.1073/pnas.1705753114. PMC 5664503. PMID 29073109. Here, we show that opioid or orexin stimulations in orbitofrontal cortex and insula causally enhance hedonic “liking” reactions to sweetness and find a third cortical site where the same neurochemical stimulations reduce positive hedonic impact.
  11. ^ Kringelbach ML, Berridge KC (2012). "The Joyful Mind" (PDF). Scientific American. 307 (2): 44–45. Bibcode:2012SciAm.307b..40K. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0812-40. PMID 22844850. Retrieved 17 January 2017. So it makes sense that the real pleasure centers in the brain – those directly responsible for generating pleasurable sensations – turn out to lie within some of the structures previously identified as part of the reward circuit. One of these so-called hedonic hotspots lies in a subregion of the nucleus accumbens called the medial shell. A second is found within the ventral pallidum, a deep-seated structure near the base of the forebrain that receives most of its signals from the nucleus accumbens. ...
         On the other hand, intense euphoria is harder to come by than everyday pleasures. The reason may be that strong enhancement of pleasure – like the chemically induced pleasure bump we produced in lab animals – seems to require activation of the entire network at once. Defection of any single component dampens the high.
         Whether the pleasure circuit – and in particular, the ventral pallidum – works the same way in humans is unclear.
  12. ^ a b Berridge, Kent C.; Kringelbach, Morten L. (6 May 2015). "Pleasure systems in the brain". Neuron. 86 (3): 646–664. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2015.02.018. PMC 4425246. PMID 25950633.
  13. ^ "How we and our hedonic experience are situated or constituted in our brains and organisms remains to be seen."Conclusion, Pleasure, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pleasure/
  14. ^ "prospects seem good for new and deep scientific understanding of pleasure and of how it is organized in the brain." Conclusion, Pleasure, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pleasure/
  15. ^ a b Paul Bloom. How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like (2010) 280 pages. Draws on neuroscience, philosophy, child-development research, and behavioral economics in a study of our desires, attractions, and tastes.
  16. ^ "A Concert Violinist on the Metro?". NPR.org. 11 April 2007.
  17. ^ Gene Weingarten (April 8, 2007). "Pearls Before Breakfast: Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let's find out". Washington Post.
  18. ^ Freud, Siegmund (1950). Beyond the pleasure principle. New York: Liveright.
  19. ^ Frijda, Nico F. (2010). "On the Nature and Function of Pleasure". In Kringelbach, Morten L.; Berridge, Kent C. (eds.). Pleasures of the Brain. Oxford University Press. p. 99.
  20. ^ Posner, Jonathan; Russell, James A.; Peterson, Bradley S. (2005-09-01). "The circumplex model of affect: An integrative approach to affective neuroscience, cognitive development, and psychopathology". Development and Psychopathology. 17 (3): 715–734. doi:10.1017/S0954579405050340. ISSN 1469-2198. PMC 2367156. PMID 16262989.
  21. ^ Schimmack, Ulrich (2001-01-01). "Pleasure, displeasure, and mixed feelings: Are semantic opposites mutually exclusive?". Cognition and Emotion. 15 (1): 81–97. doi:10.1080/02699930126097. ISSN 0269-9931. S2CID 144572285.
  22. ^ Schimmack, Ulrich (2005-08-01). "Response latencies of pleasure and displeasure ratings: Further evidence for mixed feelings". Cognition and Emotion. 19 (5): 671–691. doi:10.1080/02699930541000020. ISSN 0269-9931. S2CID 144217149.
  23. ^ Kron, Assaf; Goldstein, Ariel; Lee, Daniel Hyuk-Joon; Gardhouse, Katherine; Anderson, Adam Keith (2013-08-01). "How Are You Feeling? Revisiting the Quantification of Emotional Qualia". Psychological Science. 24 (8): 1503–1511. doi:10.1177/0956797613475456. ISSN 0956-7976. PMID 23824581. S2CID 403233.
  24. ^ The Forty Principal Doctrines, Number III.
  25. ^ Letter to Menoeceus Archived 2008-10-13 at the Wayback Machine, Section 131-2.
  26. ^ About the Ends of Goods and Evils, Book I Archived 2013-12-09 at the Wayback Machine, From Section IX, Torquatus sets out his understanding of Epicurus's philosophy.
  27. ^ Eusebius Praeparatio Evangelica Chapter 18
  28. ^ Haque, Amber (2004). "Psychology from Islamic Perspective: Contributions of Early Muslim Scholars and Challenges to Contemporary Muslim Psychologists". Journal of Religion and Health. 43 (4): 357–377 [371]. doi:10.1007/s10943-004-4302-z. S2CID 38740431.
  29. ^ Counsels and Maxims Archived 2017-12-01 at the Wayback Machine, Chapter 1, General Rules Section 1.

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

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