The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good Download books file now The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good [Format Kindle] from with Mediafire Link Download Link
Présentation de l'éditeur
From the New York Times bestselling author comes a "hugely entertaining" (NPR.org) look at vice and virtue through cutting-edge scienceAs he did in his award-winning book
The Accidental Mind, David J. Linden—highly regarded neuroscientist, professor, and writer—weaves empirical science with entertaining anecdotes to explain how the gamut of behaviors that give us a buzz actually operates.
The Compass of Pleasure makes clear why drugs like nicotine and heroin are addictive while LSD is not, how fast food restaurants ensure that diners will eat more, why some people cannot resist the appeal of a new sexual encounter, and much more. Provocative and illuminating, this is a radically new and thorough look at the desires that define us.
Biographie de l'auteur
David J. Linden is a professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The author of The Accidental Mind—winner of a Silver Medal at the Independent Publisher's Book Awards—he serves as the editor in chief of the Journal of Neurophysiology. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Books with free ebook downloads available The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good
The Compass Of Pleasure Why Some Things Feel So Good Jun 23 2011 The Compass of Pleasure How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods Orgasm Exercise Marijuana Generosity Vodka Learning and Gambling Feel So GoodDownload The Compass of Pleasure How Our Brains Make Fatty The Compass of Pleasure How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods Orgasm Exercise Marijuana Generosity Vodka Learning and Gambling Feel So GoodThe Compass of Pleasure How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods Feb 27 2014 The Compass of Pleasure How Our Brains Make Fatty Vodka Learning and Gambling Feel So Good Our Brains Make Fatty Foods Orgasm Exercise Buy the Book The Compass Of Pleasure David J Linden David Linden s New Book That Explores How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods Orgasm Exercise Vodka Learning and Gambling Feel So Good The Compass of Pleasure The Compass of Pleasure How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods The author of The Compass of Pleasure How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods Orgasm Exercise Marijuana Generosity Vodka Learning and Gambling Feel So Good
*****
"There are variants in genes that turn down the function of dopamine signaling within the pleasure circuit. For people who carry these gene variants, their muted dopamine systems lead to blunted pleasure circuits, which in turn affects their pleasure-seeking activities. ... Any one of us could be an addict at any time. Addiction is not fundamentally a moral failing -- it's not a disease of weak-willed losers." -- David Linden
Many of us humans are aware of our personal and ambiguous relationship to pleasure, which we spend a great amount of time and resources pursuing. As we deal with other influencing forces, however, we also tend to regulate pleasure. A key motivator of our lives, pleasure is central to learning, since we find food, water, and sex motivating to survive and pass our genetic DNA onto future generations. Certain varieties of pleasure sensations are regarded as specially guarded areas. Many of our most important rituals involving prayer, music, dance, and meditation create types of transcendent pleasure that has become deeply intrenched in human social and cultural practice. The skillful neuroscientist and articulate author sums it up, "While most people are able to achieve a certain degree of pleasure with only moderate indulgence, those with blunted dopamine systems are driven to overdo it. In order to get to that same set point of pleasure that others would get to easily -- maybe with two drinks at the bar and a laugh with friends -- you need six drinks at the bar to get the same thing."
Our religions, our educational and legal systems, are all deeply concerned with controlling pleasure, a mind over body notion. But this intrinsic pleasure that can also be initiated or increased by artificial activators like cocaine, heroin, or modest doses of nicotine or alcohol, are located in our brains, transmitting a pleasure buzz from a wide variety of experiences. One can turn to theories of human pleasure and its regulation with support from social history or cultural anthropology, but human pleasure is mostly influenced by tradition and culture. However, The Compass of Pleasure explores a different type of more profound theory based on a cross-cultural biological explanation. The clear and orderly thinking author concludes, "Pleasure must be earned, must be achieved naturally, and it should be sought in moderation. Self denial of pleasure can yield spiritual growth, even while pleasure is transitory."
In this book the author, Dr. David Linden, professor of neuroscience, who likes to tell his students, at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, that the golden age of brain research is right now, argues that most of our lives experiences are transcendent. This applies equally to illicit vices as well as social practices. Various diverse activities as exercise, or socially sanctioned rituals as meditative prayer, or even charitable donations, all fall into this category. Such daily activities trigger an anatomically defined and biochemically determined pleasure circuits in the brain. Shopping, learning, highly caloric foods, gambling, prayer, and browsing on the Internet; all evoke neuro signals that trigger the medial forebrain pleasure circuit, a small group of inter-connected brain areas. These activated tiny clumps of neurons then transmit vague to intense human pleasure signals just experienced.
Linden's theory of pleasure reframes our understanding of the part of the human body that societies are most intent upon regulating. So, "While we might assume that the anatomical region most closely governed by laws, religious prohibitions, and social mores is the genitalia, or the mouth, or the vocal cords, it is actually the medial forebrain pleasure circuit." As societies and as individuals, we are hell-bent on achieving and controlling pleasure, and it is those neurons, deep in our brains, that are the battle ground of that struggle. The dark side of pleasure is, of course, addiction. It is now becoming clear that addiction is associated with long-lasting changes in the biochemical, electrical, and morphological functions of connections within the meddle fore brain pleasure circuit. There is strong support that these changes underlie many of the dark sides of addiction, including progressive tolerance, craving, withdrawal, and relapse. In this sense, pleasure, addiction and memory, are closely related and directly interconnected.
David Linden, in the tradition of great science popularizers of George Gamow and Roger Penrose, like a skillful troubadour who entertains your mind into wonder, iterates, "It would be possible to write a book exploring the brain's pleasure circuits that were free of not only molecules but also basic anatomy,... If you come along for the ride and work with me just a bit to learn some basic neuroscience, I'll do my best to make it lively and fun as we explore the cellular and molecular basis of human pleasure, ..., and addiction."
Par Didaskalex
- Publié sur Amazon.com
David Linden has done it again. If you liked his first book, The Accidental Mind, about evolution and the brain, you'll love The Compass of Pleasure. The latter is a neurological tour of reward pathways in the brain, explaining some aspects of obesity, sex, runner's highs, drug addiction, and gambling, among other things. The author has the knack for explaining complicated things while being witty instead of condescending. It's an easy read for such complex material -- you can finish it in a couple of nights, but don't try reading it when you're sleepy! It may be well-explained, but it doesn't feel dumbed down and it's still challenging. If you want to understand your alcoholic aunt, your slutty sister, your fat father, your exercise-bulemic brother, your ungenerous uncle or your gambling grandpa, here's what their wiring is doing. Well conceived, well written, and well past time you got your copy.
Par Jan Steckel
- Publié sur Amazon.com