The Compass of Pleasure
- Omobolanle Ajose
Humans have an elaborate romance to pleasure which we spend a great deal of time chasing. Certain forms of pleasure such as rituals relating prayer, music, party, and meditation are accorded special status. Intrinsic pleasures that can be initiated or increased by unnatural activators like cocaine, heroin, or humble doses of nicotine or alcohol, are located in our brains transmitting a pleasure excitement from a multitude of former mateperiences.
I find the reserve, The Compass of Pleasure because neuroscientist David J. Linden the author, explored the dark side of pleasure. He explained how the human brain can turn pleasures into addictions and patterns so overpowering and pervasive that people will sacrifice almost anything merely to get a fix. This sort of tendencies makes us speculate why anyone would destroy their health, overlook their family, and spend themselves into poverty all in pursuit of an habit. Linden says it all comes down to an individual neuro-chemical - dopamine.
The conditions I discovered while scanning this book includes:
- Stoic, meaning capacity to go through pain or hardship without displaying feelings or problems.
- Painasymbolia, also known as pain dissociation which really is a condition where pain is experienced without unpleasantness. Ventral tegmental area (VTA), which really is a assortment of neurons situated at the center of themidbrain that sends dopamine launching axons to other parts of the brain like the amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, dorsal striatum and hippocampus.
- Neuroleptics, signifying dopamine receptor antagonists.
Linden (2011), details most experiences inside our lives that people find as transcendent, whether illicit vices, socially sanctioned ritual or sociable procedures as meditative prayer to stimulate an anatomically and biochemically defined pleasure circuit in the mind. He used past research studies as personal references.
Two postdoctoral fellows at McGill School conducted experiments that included implanting electrodes in the brains of rats to activate their pleasure circuits. The electrodes were located in positions that stimulated the medial forebrain package, the axons that excite the dopamine neurons of the ventral tegmental area (VTA). The electrode locations that produced the strongest pleasure were the ones that most effectively turned on the dopamine neurons of the VTA.
Another experimental design from the publication focused on the stimulation of the mind of a homosexual psychiatric patient using surgically implanted electrodes. Prior to the patient's brain stimulation, he was made to view a film that highlighted sexual intercourse between a male and a female. He was sexually indifferent and angry about being designed to view the film. After the pleasure circuit home- stimulation, he agreed to view the film again during which he became sexually aroused, possessed an erection and masturbated to orgasm. After he was discharged from a healthcare facility, he had a sexual marriage with a woman for several months. During this period, his homosexual activity was reduced but did not stop completely.
In humans, rats, and other mammals, the praise circuit is interwoven with brain centers involved in decision making, planning, emotion and memory storage space. When we find an event pleasurable, it packages in motion several operations such as liking the experience and we relate both external and inside cues with the knowledge. These associations allow us to forecast how we should respond to repeat or assign a value to enjoyable experience so that in future we can regulate how much effort we are willing to expand and the risk we are prepared to take to get them.
Linden (2011) defined addiction as consistent, compulsive medication use in the face of ever more negative life repercussions. He discussed that the methodical definition of dependency is really rooted in the brain'sinabilityto experience pleasure and that the dark side of pleasure is cravings. Craving is associated with long-lasting changes in the biochemical, electro-mechanical, and morphological functions of cable connections within the medial forebrain pleasure circuit. These changes underlie many of the dark sides of addiction, including progressive tolerance, craving, withdrawal and relapse. Therefore, pleasure, addiction and storage area are tightly related, and immediately interconnected.
Psychoactive drugs can be utilized in different interpersonal contexts; as remedies, religious sacrament, real recreation, or to define oneself within a subgroup. Across ethnicities and over a large number of years of human history, people have consistently found ways to alter the function of the brains. Psychoactive drugs like cocaine, alcohol, and opiates highly activate dopamine action in VTA aim for regions. Pleasure is central to some but not all psychoactive drugs.
Certain foods and certain drugs can switch on the pleasure circuits. While excess weight results from food dependency, food addiction shares many properties and natural substrates with drug addiction, including a solid heritable element and triggering by stress.
Orgasm is another pleasure hype that may be weaker than cocaine but more powerful than food. ( Cite web page here) It really is a multifaceted experience with dissociable sensory and affective, mental, and worthwhile components. It is fiery, transcendent and unique. Climax highly activates the dopamine-using medial forebrain pleasure circuit. Drugs that modulate dopamine signaling in the brain can regulate libido and climax. Epileptic seizures or brain stimulation with electrodes can produce orgasms that are without pleasure or mental feeling.
Gambling addiction is associated with minimal activation of the medial forebrain pleasure circuit. Hereditary variants that suppress dopamine signaling, especially in the medial forebrain, are associated with high rate of gambling obsession. For people who carry these gene variations, their muted dopamine systems lead to blunted pleasure circuits, which in turn impacts their pleasure-seeking activities.
Intensive exercise can bring about short-term euphoria, reduced amount of anxiety, and boosts in pain threshold. Lasting painful stimulus is associated with an increase of dopamine. Interestingly, charitable presenting produces an activation of the pleasure circuit. The connections of pleasure and associative learning in the medial forebrain pleasure circuit produces both beneficial and detrimental rewards. The power of experience to create long-term changes in the pleasure circuit permits arbitrary rewards and abstract suggestions to be sensed as pleasurable, a phenomenon that ultimately underlies much of human tendencies and culture. This same process is responsible for changing pleasure into habit.
Reading the compass of pleasure provides an insight on the function of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the mind and the way the dopamine systems in the brain play an important role in pleasure seeking and addictive actions. I also learned that dopamine is accountable for almost all of our immoral habits and secret urges. It is in charge of love, lust, adultery, desire, attention, and obsession. The denial of pleasure can deliver spiritual expansion.
In practice, you can see beyond someone's behavior, personal background, and environment to comprehend what goes on in the mind when uncontrollable habits such as habit promote themselves. Understanding the interaction between your pleasure circuits and dopamine in the brain help us as health care professionals to comprehend that addicts are not weak, defective humans lacking in willpower but are somewhat people who have brains that are chemically lacking.
According to Lundy-Ekman (2013, p. 239), "Parkinson's disease is the death of dopamine producing skin cells in the sustantia nigra". Occupational therapy improves mobility and functional position in people with Parkinson's disease. Intense resistance training produces greater muscle hypertrophy and efficient benefits than are produced by standard exercise.
According to Linden (2011, p. 127), there are versions in genes turning down the functions of dopamine signaling within the pleasure circuit. These versions in genes let people seek pleasure through different activities. These activities may be meaningful to a client while others may be addictions they could want to stop. Understanding the biology of pleasure circuits can help clinician's such as occupational therapist better know very well what an individual deems important or pleasurable. Understanding of types of pleasure such as rituals, exercises, music, boogie and even meditations that are of significant to a customer obtained during an occupational profile, helps therapist in planning interventions for clients. On the other hand, the therapist can also help create therapeutic interventions to aid in addictions.
Linden (2011, p. 150), further explained that exercises comes with an anti-depressive effect, shows long-term improvement in mental functions and slows cognitive drop that accompanies normal aging. Occupational therapists utilize a variety of population and this piece of information makes it interesting to know that flexibility exercises and other kinds of exercises provided during remedy might be able to improve mental functions and sluggish cognitive decline in normal aging.
Dopamine and serotonin are essential neurotransmitters in the brain that impact many behaviours and movement patterns such as walking and coordination. Dopamine levels are associated with many neurological conditions such as Parkinson's disease, psychosis and even attention deficits hyperactive disorders. Too much or too little dopamine can interfere with cognition, habit, or engine skills. In practice, occupational therapists work with clients with various neurological conditions by assessing and analyzing your client, the surroundings and their important occupational performance. Having perception into a clients deficits and its effect on occupational performance is important to therapist since it helps the therapist to have the ability to plan and offer therapeutic interventions targeted at increasing cognition, coordination, flexibility and functional status in clients.
References
Lundy-Ekman, L. (2013). Neuroscience: Basics for Treatment. St. Louis, Mo: Saunders/ Elsevier Inc.
Linden, D. J. (2011). The Compass of Pleasure: How our Brains make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, learning, and Gaming Feel so excellent. NY, NY: Penguin Group Inc.
Sturkenboom, I. , Thijssen, M. , Gons-van, J. E. , & Jansen, I. (2011). Suggestions for Occupational Remedy in Parkinson's Disease. Retrieved July 14, 2014, from National Parkinson Groundwork: http://www. parkinson. org/NationalParkinsonFoundation/files/a5/a5c7ef92-a101-4485-96b2-7d81b31a42c9. pdf
