The Compass of Pleasure

Vice, virtue and the brain's pleasure circuits.

by David J. Linden, Ph.D.

Video Games Can Activate the Brain's Pleasure Circuits

Winning money from gambling activated the brain's pleasure circuits. While money is not an intrinsic, evolutionarily salient reward in the same way that food, water, and sex are, one could argue that it has come to represent the possibility of intrinsic rewards, and so activation of the pleasure circuit by money is not strictly arbitrary. Read More

This Is Your Brain on Charitable Giving

When I was in the first grade, I attended an after-school program at the Jewish Community Center in my hometown of Santa Monica, Calif. Read More

The Irish Ether Drinking Craze

County Derry, Ireland, 1880. During the 1830s Ireland was awash in alcohol, much of it produced locally in response to high alcohol import taxes imposed by the ruling British government. While many locals were assiduously distilling illegal poitín from potatoes or malted barley, a backlash against alcohol was also growing. Read More

Exercise, pleasure and the brain

Jeff Tweedy, leader of the roots-inflected rock bands Wilco and Uncle Tupelo, struggled mightily with various drug addictions, most notably to prescription painkillers, alcohol, and cigarettes. These were coincident with, and in some cases triggered by, chronic migraines, major depression, and panic attacks that have plagued him for years. Read More

Food, Pleasure and Evolution

One front in the societal war for your body fat is located in the test kitchens and offices of restaurant chains, commercial bakeries, and other "food service" corporations. Read More

A Disease You Can Get Yelled At For Having

These days most of us are willing to believe that drug addiction—including alcoholism—is a disease. Still, we harbor a sneaking suspicion that it’s really a disease of the weak-willed, the spiritually unfit, or people who are not quite like us. The comedian Mitch Hedberg understood this when he riffed: Read More

Aching, yearning to know about the future

We humans thrive on information. We love news, gossip, rumors, and, most importantly, information about our own future. What's more, a number of studies by economists and psychologists have confirmed what we already know from experience: We want that information now, not later. Do monkeys also share this desire to know what the future holds? Read More

Cocaine, Nicotine and Your Inner Dog

Recently, hundreds of indigenous people staged a protest in front of the US embassy in La Paz Bolivia in which they chewed coca leaf and chanted "Coca es medicina!" The protest was peaceful and good-natured with protestors offering coca leaves to the Bolivian police, some of whom were happy to join in. Read More

David J. Linden, Ph.D., is a professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the author of The Compass of Pleasure.

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