Better's Blinkist

What’s in it for me? Discover the neurological secrets behind pleasure.

Neuroscience has been able to shed light on some of these mysteries. As these blinks will show, pleasure, whether it comes from digging into a juicy chocolate cake, or placing a daring bet at the poker table, arises in an intricate set of structures in the brain that all work together in sometimes surprising ways. In these blinks you’ll learn why cigarettes are more addictive than heroin; the real difference between sex and love; and what running and cannabis have in common.

20 April, 2020 05:34 Share

Pleasurable experiences activate the brain’s medial forebrain pleasure circuit.

In this way, our medial forebrain pleasure circuit is a strong influence on our behavior. Scientists have examined this relationship through studies where the pleasure circuit is deliberately stimulated. One of these studies was highly controversial, and its findings have been contested to this day. It took place in the 1970s, at Tulane University, by Dr. Robert Galbraith Heath. He wanted to discover if a homosexual man could derive pleasure from heterosexual intercourse by electrically stimulating his pleasure circuit. Heath implanted electrodes into the subject’s brain and claimed that later in the study, the subject had changed so much that he was able to ejaculate during intercourse with a woman in the lab. Heath also said that the subject even had a sexual relationship with a married woman after the experiment concluded. Despite its limited scope, this study shows that direct electrical stimulation on the brain’s pleasure circuitry can be highly influential to short-term behavior.

20 April, 2020 05:35 Share

Addiction is shaped by the way in which a drug gives pleasure – and by its availability.

Of course, heroin is illegal, while cigarettes aren’t, so it makes sense that more of us take up smoking than shooting up. A drug’s availability, the attitudes of your peers toward it and the methods and rituals surrounding it are hugely influential factors in addiction. But it also comes down to the kinds of pleasure that heroin and cigarettes produce. An injection of heroin results in one big pleasure surge, while lots of puffs at many cigarettes give us lighter and more fleeting pleasure rushes. This means that acting and being rewarded for that action happens more frequently with smoking – thus addiction occurs more quickly. It’s like training a dog – if you ask him to do a trick multiple times a day and reward him with immediate, frequent treats, he’ll learn a trick more quickly than if it happens just once in 24 hours. Addiction doesn’t just alter our behavior and daily routines. It physically changes structures in the brain. This was demonstrated in a study where rats that had been administered a cocaine solution for 28 days exhibited far bushier extensions of nerve cells in their pleasure circuit than prior to the experiment.

20 April, 2020 05:36 Share

Our pleasure circuits are activated by foods full of fat and sugar.

Foods high in sugar and fat release more dopamine, which is why we enjoy chocolate and pizza so much. The urge to continue activating our pleasure circuits with such foods may be powerful even when we don’t have a huge appetite. The subsequent rewiring of our brains is what leads us to reach for the third slice of chocolate cake, and see the numbers on our bathroom scales rise.

20 April, 2020 05:38 Share

Falling in love and sex both activate the pleasure circuit, but in different ways.

Falling in love and sexual arousal both activate the pleasure circuit. But the way they activate it is quite different. Unlike in sexual arousal, feelings of love deactivate the judgment and social cognition centers of the brain. This is why when we fall in love with someone, we believe them to be better, smarter or more beautiful than everybody else. Something to consider next time you meet a friend’s questionable new squeeze!

20 April, 2020 05:39 Share

However, orgasm is normally an intensely pleasurable experience. This is because it produces a dopamine surge. Dutch scientist Gert Holstege’s brain scans of heterosexual men and women orgasming proved this by showing significant activation of the pleasure circuit. Sex and love both produce pleasure – all the more reason to combine them!

20 April, 2020 05:40 Share

Gambling is addictive because it also stimulates the pleasure circuit.

As for nurture, compulsive gambling often runs in families. Compulsive gambler Bill Lee describes in his memoir, Born to Lose, how his father dragged him round gambling dens as a "good luck charm" as a kid, and his grandfather even sold his family to another family to cover a gambling debt!

20 April, 2020 05:41 Share

We’ve already heard about drug addiction in the second blink, and seen how fatty foods can be addictive. But can a recreational behavior like gambling be an addiction too? To find out, let’s take a look at what an addiction really is. An activity or substance becomes addictive when it leads to persistent, compulsive repetition in the face of increasingly negative life consequences; increased dependence alongside increased tolerance; strong cravings in later stages that lead to a high incidence of relapse; the replacement of euphoric pleasure with desire; and dangerously pleasurable relapses after abstinence.

20 April, 2020 05:41 Share

It’s not just vices that light up our pleasure circuit – healthy living and good behavior can too.

Painful stimuli also release dopamine, which, as we know, gives us pleasure. This explains why we can actually experience pain and pleasure simultaneously, which can be the experience of women during childbirth and of sadomasochists during sex games.

20 April, 2020 05:43 Share

Runner’s high refers to the bliss that runners and other athletes enjoy even when nauseated from fatigue. This physical pain causes increased opioid release in the brain and a rise in endocannabinoids – the brain’s natural cannabis-like molecules – in the bloodstream.

20 April, 2020 05:44 Share

Knowing things simply for the sake of knowing can also activate the pleasure circuit. Ethan Bromberg-Martin and Okihide Hikosaka at the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, showed that monkeys, like humans, when given the choice, opted to receive information about a future reward (such as its shape), even though it didn’t boost their chances of receiving that reward.

20 April, 2020 05:44 Share

Final summary

Meet Your Happy Chemicals (2012) provides a detailed introduction to the four chemicals responsible for our happiness: dopamine, serotonin, endorphin and oxytocin. The book explores the mechanics of what makes us happy and why, as well as why some bad things make us feel so good.

20 April, 2020 05:45 Share