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Pleasure
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pleasure describes the broad class of mental states that humans and other animals experience as
positive, enjoyable, or worth seeking. It includes more specific mental states such as happiness,
entertainment, enjoyment, ecstasy, and euphoria. The early psychological account of pleasure, the
pleasure principle, describes it as a positive feedback mechanism, motivating the organism to
recreate in the future the situation which it has just found pleasurable and to avoid situations that
have caused pain in the past.[1]

The experience of pleasure is subjective and different individuals will experience different kinds
and amounts of pleasure in the same situation. Many pleasurable experiences are associated with
satisfying basic biological drives, such as eating, exercise, hygiene, and sex.[2] The appreciation of
cultural artifacts and activities such as art, music, dancing, and literature is often pleasurable.[2]

Based upon the incentive salience model of reward the attractive and motivational property of a
stimulus that induces approach behavior and consummatory behavior[2] an intrinsic reward has
two components: a "wanting" or desire component which is reflected in approach behavior and a
"liking" or pleasure component that is reflected in consummatory behavior.[2] While all pleasurable
stimuli are rewards, some rewards do not evoke pleasure.[2]

Contents
1 Neuropsychology
1.1 Neurobiological basis
1.2 Psychology
2 Philosophical views
2.1 Philosophies of pleasure
3 As a uniquely human experience
4 See also
5 References
6 Further reading
7 External links

Neuropsychology
Neurobiological basis

Pleasure centers or "hedonic hotspots" are a set of brain structures within the reward system that are

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directly responsible for mediating the "liking" or pleasure component of an intrinsic reward, as
opposed to brain structures that activate in correlation with or as a consequence of the perception of
pleasure.[3] Various compartments within the nucleus accumbens, ventral pallidum, and
parabrachial nucleus have been identified as pleasure centers which respond to a variety of
pleasurable stimuli.[3][4] The orbitofrontal cortex and insular cortex likely contain hedonic hotspots
as well.[4] The anterior cingulate cortex, ventral tegmental area, and amygdala have also been
observed to activate in functional neuroimaging studies in response to pleasurable stimuli, but these
structures do not necessarily contain hedonic hotspots.[3][5]

The simultaneous activation of every hedonic hotspot within the reward system is believed to be
necessary for generating the sensation of an intense euphoria.[6]

Psychology

Pleasure is considered to be 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.[7] 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).[8] 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.

Pleasure is often regarded as a bipolar construct, meaning that the two ends of the spectrum from
pleasant to unpleasant are mutually exclusive. This view is e.g. inherent in the circumplex model of
affect.[9] Yet, some lines of research suggest that people do experience pleasant and unpleasant
feelings at the same time, giving rise to so-called mixed feelings.[10][11][12]

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 will be more desired than an otherwise identical sweater that has not, though
considerably less so if it has been washed.[13] 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.[13][14][15] Paul Bloom describes these phenomena as arising from a form of essentialism.

Philosophical views
Epicurus and his followers defined the highest pleasure as the absence of suffering[16] and pleasure
itself as "freedom from pain in the body and freedom from turmoil in the soul".[17] According to

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Cicero (or rather his character Torquatus) Epicurus also believed that pleasure was the chief good
and pain the chief evil.[18]

In the 12th century Razi's "Treatise of the Self and the Spirit" (Kitab al Nafs Wal 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."[19]

The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer understood pleasure as a negative

sensation, one that negates the usual existential condition of suffering.[20]

Philosophies of pleasure

Utilitarianism and hedonism are philosophies that advocate increasing to the maximum the amount
of pleasure and minimizing the amount of suffering.

As a uniquely human experience

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.[4]

See also
False pleasure Orgasm
Flow (psychology) Pain and pleasure
Gratification Sadomasochism
Leisure Happiness

References
1. Freud, Siegmund (1950). Beyond the pleasure
principle. New York: Liveright.
2. Schultz W (2015). "Neuronal reward and
decision signals: from theories to data".
Physiological Reviews. 95 (3): 853951.
doi:10.1152/physrev.00023.2014.
PMC 4491543 . PMID 26109341. "Rewards
induce approach behavior, also called appetitive
or preparatory behavior, and consummatory
behavior. ... Thus any stimulus, object, event,
activity, or situation that has the potential to
make us approach and consume it is by

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Pleasure - Wikipedia
definition a reward. ... Rewards can also be
intrinsic to behavior (31, 546, 547). They
contrast with extrinsic rewards that provide
motivation for behavior and constitute the
essence of operant behavior in laboratory tests.
Intrinsic rewards are activities that are
pleasurable on their own and are undertaken for
their own sake, without being the means for
getting extrinsic rewards. We may even
generate our own rewards through internal
decisions. Mice in the wild enter wheels and
run on them on repeated occasions without
receiving any other reward or benefit, like the
proverbial wheel running hamster (358).
Movements produce proprioceptive stimulation
in muscle spindles and joint receptors, touch
stimulation on the body surface, and visual
stimulation from seeing the movement, all of
which can be perceived as pleasurable and thus
have reward functions. Intrinsic rewards are
genuine rewards in their own right, as they
induce learning, approach, and pleasure, like
perfectioning, playing, and enjoying the piano.
Although they can serve to condition higher
order rewards, they are not conditioned, higher
order rewards, as attaining their reward
properties does not require pairing with an
unconditioned reward. Other examples for
intrinsic rewards are exploration, own beauty,
gourmet eating, visiting art exhibitions, reading
books, taking power and control of people, and
investigating the natural order of the world."
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3. Berridge KC, Robinson TE, Aldridge JW
(2009). "Dissecting components of reward:
'liking', 'wanting', and learning". Current
Opinion in Pharmacology. 9 (1): 6573.
doi:10.1016/j.coph.2008.12.014. PMC 2756052
. PMID 19162544. "A major goal for affective
neuroscience is to identify which brain
substrates cause pleasure, whether subjective or
objective. Neuroimaging and neural recording
studies of have found that rewards ranging from
sweet taste to intravenous cocaine, winning
money or a smiling face activate many brain
structures, including orbitofrontal cortex,
anterior cingulate and insula, and subcortical
structures such as nucleus accumbens, ventral
pallidum, ventral tegmentum, and mesolimbic
dopamine projections, amygdala, etc.
[4,5,6,7,8,9,10,1113]. But which of those
brain systems actually cause the pleasure of the
reward? ..."
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Pleasure - Wikipedia
4. Berridge KC, Kringelbach ML (May 2015).
"Pleasure systems in the brain". Neuron. 86 (3):
646664. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2015.02.018.
PMC 4425246 . PMID 25950633. "Pleasure is
sometimes assumed to be a purely subjective
feeling. But pleasure also has objective features
in the form of measurable hedonic reactions,
both neural and behavioral, to valenced events.
In this review, we denote objective hedonic
reactions as liking reactions (with quotes) to
distinguish them from the subjective experience
of liking (in the ordinary sense, without
quotes). Objective hedonic reactions can be
measured in both human and animal
neuroscience studies, which together allow
some comparisons across species and can lead
to a more complete causal picture of how brain
systems mediate hedonic impact. ... In the
prefrontal cortex, recent evidence indicates that
the 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 NAc and 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
(Sderpalm 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,
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasure
2010)."
5. Kringelbach, Morten L.; Berridge, Kent C.
(2010). "The Neuroscience of Happiness and
Pleasure". Soc Res.
6. Kringelbach ML, Berridge KC (2013). "The
Joyful Mind". From Abuse to Recovery:
Understanding Addiction. Macmillan.
pp. 199207. ISBN 9781466842557. Retrieved
8 April 2016. "So it makes sense that the real
pleasure centers in the brainthose directly
responsible for generating pleasurable
sensationsturn 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 pleasurelike the
chemically induced pleasure bump we
produced in lab animalsseems to require
activation of the entire network at once.
Defection of any single component dampens
the high."
7. Frijda, Nico F. (2010). "On the Nature and
Function of Pleasure". In Kringelbach, Morten
L.; Berridge, Kent C. Pleasures of the Brain.
Oxford University Press. p. 99.
8. Kringelbach, Morten L. (2008-10-15). The
Pleasure Center : Trust Your Animal Instincts:
Trust Your Animal Instincts. Oxford University
Press, US. ISBN 9780199717392.
9. 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 (03): 715734.
doi:10.1017/S0954579405050340.
ISSN 1469-2198. PMC 2367156 .
PMID 16262989.
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10. Schimmack, Ulrich (2001-01-01). "Pleasure,
displeasure, and mixed feelings: Are semantic
opposites mutually exclusive?". Cognition and
Emotion. 15 (1): 8197.
doi:10.1080/02699930126097.
ISSN 0269-9931.
11. Schimmack, Ulrich (2005-08-01). "Response
latencies of pleasure and displeasure ratings:
Further evidence for mixed feelings". Cognition
and Emotion. 19 (5): 671691.
doi:10.1080/02699930541000020.
ISSN 0269-9931.
12. 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): 15031511.
doi:10.1177/0956797613475456.
ISSN 0956-7976. PMID 23824581.
13. 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.
14. "A Concert Violinist on the Metro?". NPR.org.
11 April 2007.
15. 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.
16. The Forty Principal Doctrines
(http://wiki.epicurus.info/Principal_Doctrines),
Number III.
17. Letter to Menoeceus (http://wiki.epicurus.info
/Letter_to_Menoeceus), Section 131-2.
18. About the Ends of Goods and Evils, Book I
(http://www.epicurus.info/etexts
/De_Finibus.html#IX,), From Section IX,
Torquatus sets out his understanding of
Epicurus's philosophy.
19. 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): 357377 [371].
doi:10.1007/s10943-004-4302-z.
20. Counsels and Maxims
(http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer
/arthur/counsels/chapter1.html), Chapter 1,
General Rules Section 1.

Further reading
Bloom, Paul (2010). How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like.
W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0393340006. Draws on neuroscience, philosophy,
child-development research, and behavioral economics in a study of our desires, attractions,
and tastes.
M.L. Kringelbach. The pleasure center: Trust Your Animal Instincts (2009). Oxford
University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-532285-9. A general overview of the neuroscience of
pleasure.

External links
Paul, Margaret (April 14, 2015). "The Difference Between Happiness and Pleasure". The
Huffington Post.

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