Book Selection Exploration: The Joy of Finding, the Pleasure of Picking Up, the Happiness of Encountering - "The Neuroscience of Pleasure: Where Does 'Feeling Good' Come From?" by Naoyuki Hironaka (NHK Books)
[ Content ]
Addiction to drugs or games, sexual perversions, overeating... how are these "runaway pleasures" triggered in the brain?
Why do humans find pleasure in violence?
By dividing the human brain into higher-order regions that govern cognition and language, and lower-order regions that handle animalistic desires like appetite and sex drive, this book explores the causes of distorted pleasure in the friction and misalignment between the two.
A noteworthy work that approaches the essence of pleasure—an intense emotion that conventional neuroscience has been unable to fully unravel—and clearly explains the mechanisms of a brain that "just can't stop."
[ Table of Contents ]
Introduction: Viewing the Brain Through Emotions
Chapter 1: Exploring the Origins of Pleasure (Why do pleasure/displeasure arise? Lower-order brain and higher-order brain - Perspectives on capturing the mind, etc.)
Chapter 2: Runaway Pleasure (Why does drug addiction occur? - The heating up of the higher-order brain; Distorted appetite - The friction between the lower-order and higher-order brain, etc.)
Chapter 3: Fluctuating Pleasure (The brain attracted to fear - The mechanism of wanting to see scary things; The brain that finds pleasure in violence? When fighting spirit turns into hostility, etc.)
Chapter 4: Pleasure as a Life Force (Revisiting the brain and the human figure; Beyond normal/abnormal)
[ Problem Statement ]
This book is written by a scholar who holds a doctorate in medicine and has experience at RIKEN.
It discusses almost every conceivable "feeling good" experience and "pleasure."
The introduction of the experiment by Dr. Joe Brady in the United States, presented here, is interesting.
Monkeys are seated in chairs, and the experiment is conducted with two monkeys side-by-side.
There is a switch in front of each, but the switch in front of one monkey is a non-functional dummy.
Occasionally, an unpleasant electrical stimulus occurs, and the one who presses the real switch can avoid it.
The monkey in front of the dummy switch can do nothing to stop it.
In other words, there are two types of monkeys here.
1. A monkey that can avoid unpleasant stimuli through its own efforts.
2. A monkey that has no choice but to leave unpleasant stimuli to others.
Using a company as an analogy, the former can be considered the "manager" monkey.
The latter can be considered the "regular employee" monkey.
When measuring which one felt more stress, it is said that the "manager" felt stronger stress.
The manager monkey is worn down by the stress of doing a perfect job.
Conversely, when the same experiment is conducted with rats, which lack the intelligence to do a perfect job, the "regular employee" experiences the stress.
[ Conclusion ]
Competent managers have high stress.
Regular employees under incompetent managers have high stress.
It has become the very composition of the world itself.
In the world of psychology, it is said that through the accumulation of these experiments, it has come to be believed that "unpredictability" and "inability to cope" are the primary causes of stress.
Generally, in the world of neuroscience, pleasure is often thought of in connection with the reward system.
It is a way of thinking that learns the relationship between food and stimuli and reflects it in behavior, like the famous Pavlov's dog experiment.
The first half of this book also begins with the basic principles of such a reward system.
In the reward system approach, behaviors that increase the probability of survival correspond to "pleasure."
Eating nutritious food, being recognized within social relationships, spending time in a pleasant environment, having sexual relations with an attractive partner, and so on.
By obtaining pleasure and wanting to repeat that behavior, animals increase their chances of survival and reproduction.
That is the classical way of thinking.
However, the author does not view humans as simple systems driven by a reward system.
Experimental data that cannot be explained by a simple reward system and findings from the latest neuroscience research are discussed one after another.
It was interesting for a non-expert reader that many contemporary themes are woven into the text.
It is full of easy-to-understand examples such as addiction to drugs, games, overeating, sexual perversion, and violence, as well as auditory hallucinations and schizophrenia.
To quote the author's writing, "We have hitherto thought that the 'self' is the protagonist of the ego, issuing commands to various parts of the brain and controlling the whole body, but in reality, that may not be the case. It seems that the 'self' is scattered even within appetite and sexual desire, with each asserting itself in its own way."
The argument that the animalistic brain, which performs low-level information processing, and the human brain, which performs high-level processing, interact in complex ways, and that pleasure and emotion are the patterns woven by them, is developed with persuasiveness.
Especially in the second half, the author's deep insights and philosophy, which go beyond the scope of neuroscience and psychiatry, are expressed, such as criticism of modern psychiatry that divides mental normality and abnormality, and a vision for a rich society that can be realized by accepting these as individuality, which deeply moved me.
A masterpiece that talks about the relationship between emotions, pleasure, and the brain for a general audience.
[ Comment ]
This book also touched on internet addiction for just one line.
The author seems "not to take it seriously," but the paper referenced is this 2003 study.
・Internet over-users' psychological profiles: a behavior sampling analysis on internet addiction.Whang LS, Lee S, Chang G.
A study of 13,588 users in South Korea suggests that 3.5% can be diagnosed with 'Internet addiction' and 18.4% as potentially addicted.
Regardless of the criteria, there is no doubt that an increasing number of people find the sense of connection provided by the internet to be indispensable to their daily lives.
Much like the author's view that normal and abnormal are matters of diversity, I feel that whether addiction is considered positive or negative ultimately depends on one's perspective.
[ Bonus: Today's Tanka ]
"Reading a novel late at night, like the slightly twisted lips of Jeanne Moreau"
Haku Kachou, 'Quietly Doing a Handstand'
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