Pleasure

Description

Award-winning neuroscientist David Linden shows how pleasure affects us at the most fundamental level, in our brains, and why ecstatic activities can easily become addictive. On this trip into cutting-edge science, he explores why nicotine and heroine are addictive while LSD is not; why the search for a safe appetitie suppressant has failed; if sex can be addicitve; and if we might someday control the part of the brain that makes us addicted in the first place.

Description

A leading brain scientist's look at the neurobiology of pleasure--and how pleasures can become addictions. Whether eating, taking drugs, engaging in sex, or doing good deeds, the pursuit of pleasure is a central drive of the human animal. Here, Johns Hopkins neuroscientist David J. Linden explains how pleasure affects us at the most fundamental level: in our brain. As he did in The Accidental Mind, Linden combines cutting-edge science with entertaining anecdotes to illuminate the source of the behaviors that can lead us to ecstasy but that can easily become compulsive. Why are drugs like nicotine and heroin addictive while LSD is not? Why has the search for safe appetite suppressants been such a disappointment? The Compass of Pleasure concludes with a provocative consideration of pleasure in the future, when it may be possible to activate our pleasure circuits at will and in entirely novel patterns.--From publisher description.

Subjects

Other Editions

• Pleasure: how our brains make junk food, exercise, marijuana, generosity, and gambling feel so goodOneworld2011-01-01
• PleasureOneworld2012-01-01