The Pleasure Centre - Trust Your Animal Instincts

Main Category: Neurology / Neuroscience
Also Included In: Biology / Biochemistry
Article Date: 09 Mar 2009 - 3:00 PDT

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Pleasure and desire are essential to all human behaviour. In his new book, The Pleasure Centre, Oxford University neuroscientist, Morten Kringelbach, takes us on a voyage through the brain and mind and challenges us to trust our animal instincts in pursuit of pleasure.

Pleasure and our sense of reward are produced by the interaction of many different brain regions, processed consciously or unconsciously. "A better understanding of how pleasure and desire work in our brains can give us insights into human nature," says Professor Kringelbach.

In the day-to-day routine of life, we may feel we are continually fighting our desires for what we really want. But doing so, he argues, is irrational and a huge waste of energy and resources, for it is pleasure and desire that underlie all our decisions and actions, and, therefore, our experiences. "Pleasure, desire and the partnership between our brain, body and environment enable us to reproduce and survive," he says.

So what furnishes pleasure in the brain? Emotions, language, sex, memories and learning; and humans have the capacity for 'higher order' pleasures such as money, art, music, altruism and spirituality. Mental illness such as depression, however, deprives people of pleasure, suggesting that the reward systems of the brain have become unbalanced.

The Pleasure Centre is not a quick fix to happiness. Weaving history, case studies, evolution and brain research together, Professor Kringelbach offers a new meaning to our natural desires and what makes us human. Technological progress has taken neuroscientists to the threshold of improving our understanding of human nature.

"We will need patience and control of our more destructive desires and pleasures if we are to successfully face tomorrow's hard challenges: over-population, climate change and artificial intelligence. Human nature and the tragic miracle of consciousness will undoubtedly be tested to the fullest," concludes Professor Kringelbach.

Note

The Pleasure Centre is published by Oxford University Press
ISBN 978-0-19-532285-9
£13.99 hardback
http://www.kringelbach.dk/mlk_pleasurecenter.html

Professor Morten Kringelbach is a neuroscientist. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, and a Professor at Aarhus University Denmark. http://www.neuroscience.ox.ac.uk/directory/morten-kringelbach

University of Oxford

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