[quote author=Buddy]
IMO, a good approach for me is to allow the body to experience whatever sensations come and go. Nothing will last long. The body experiences whatever happens as it happens because it's not separate from everything that is happening and shouldn't be forced to be so. When whatever intensity or duration of sensation has run it's course, the body absorbs it or pushes it out as long as there is no interference. There will be pain and there will be pleasure and everything in between, but it will certainly all pass and its mostly just peacefulness.
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I agree and try to follow a similar approach. This is rational. Pleasure is a sensation. Sensations come and go. It is natural to prefer pleasant sensations. Problems appear when we try to cling on to a pleasant sensation and recreate the experience. There is no problem with pleasant sensations if we are able to develop the discipline and awareness to let them come and go without hankering after them.
Let us revisit the perceived linkage between pleasure and addiction. Though the title of this thread is "pleasure seeking" what seemed to be discussed is harmful habits and addiction. I think incomplete information may have played a role in creating the false (unconscious?) perception of identity between pleasure and addiction. The widely publicized experiments where the so-called "pleasure center" of rat brains were tickled may have played a role in this. Since then, further experiments have demonstrated a clear difference between "wanting" and "liking" in neuroscience terms. The original experiments with rats had more to do with "wanting" rather than "liking. Not sure if this is known and understood.
Here is a link to a relatively easy to read paper which talks about this.
Wanting is not always tied to liking. There is a disconnect between the two at times. The term incentive salience is used to describe this disconnect.
[quote author=Kent Berridge in Wanting and Liking: Observations from the Neuroscience and Psychology Laboratory]
The phenomenon of incentive salience might be introduced by viewing it as a particular form of desire.
This form does not necessarily conform to traditional views of desire that posit individuals to want only what they judge to be best or most pleasant. Incentive salience can be thought of as one module or type of desire, which operates by deterministic rules and has its own brain mechanisms, amidst other modules.
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Incentive salience is a “wanting” module. It has evolved to add a visceral oomph to mental desires.
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Incentive salience is a percept-bound type of “wanting”, which typically occurs as relatively brief peaks upon encountering a reward or a physical reminder of the reward (a cue). Incentive salience does not require a clear cognition of what is wanted, and does not even need to be consciously experienced as a feeling of wanting, at least in some cases (though when it is brought into consciousness it can considerably intensify feelings of desire). Perhaps a reason for the difference is that incentive salience is mediated chiefly by subcortical brain mechanisms, whereas cognitive forms of desire are more dependent on higher cortex-based brain systems.
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Incentive salience can be viewed as a motivational transformation of a brain signal corresponding to the perceived object of desire or its mental representation
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How can incentive salience be recognized?
There are several distinguishing psychological features that help it be recognized even in animal experiments as well as in human daily life.
Incentive salience gives a “motivational magnet” property to stimuli it is attributed to, and makes those stimuli attractive, “wanted”, and potently able to elicit approach.
Incentive salience also triggers momentary peaks of intense motivation to obtain a cued reward.
Such features (reward cues becoming motivational magnets, cues as objects of desire, peaks of cue-triggered “wanting” for the actual reward) allow us to recognize incentive salience in behavioral neuroscience experiments with animals as well as in people.
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One feature of incentive salience is to endow reward-related cues (in experiments these are Pavlovian conditioned stimuli or CSs) with an ability to trigger powerful peaks of “wanting” for their own associated reward. For example, the scent of food may suddenly make you ravenous as lunchtime approaches even if you were not feeling particularly hungry moments before that cue occurred. As suggested by Olav Gjelsvik in his Workshop commentary, the arrival of a dessert trolley at your restaurant table may make you succumb at that moment to the temptation to indulge. The tinkling sound of an email arriving in your computer inbox may trigger a sudden urge to check the message. In all such cases, cue-triggered “wanting” occurs as a temporary peak, bound to a particular encounter with a cue or to a vivid mental image of the reward. Peaks of cue-triggered “wanting” are sudden, intense, temporary, reversible and repeatable.
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A second feature of incentive salience is that its attribution to a reward-related stimulus may make that stimulus “wanted”, even if the stimulus is just the cue. The Pavlovian CS stimulus becomes an attractive “motivational magnet” itself, in addition to triggering “wanting” for its hedonic reward, although the CS cue is only a learned predictor for the reward with no intrinsic value of its own. In a sense, a cue can even become “good enough to eat”. Stephen Mahler in our lab has shown that activating incentive salience makes a rat more intensely approach, handle, and even try to “consume” a metal object whose presence predicts sugar, with nibbles and sniffs of the metal cue that are similar to movements used in eating actual sugar.
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Such motivational magnet features of attractive cues are made much more potent by activation of mesolimbic systems, such as the amygdala or nucleus accumbens. Motivational magnet features of reward cues may account for a host of phenomena in which individuals become pulled toward reward cues acting as beacons to guide brain motivation systems......
A related mark of a motivational magnet is that individuals may “want” to possess that cue, just as they “want” its hedonic reward. Animals in an activated brain state will work harder to obtain a CS or cue that is attributed with incentive salience, just as they would work to obtain the actual reward. This is sometimes called conditioned reinforcement. For example, rats will learn to press a lever or poke their nose into a hole simply in order to obtain a sound or other cue-event or object that has been previously associated with a sugar reward or a cocaine reward. Activating their mesolimbic brain systems makes them work much harder at it. People too may sometimes “want” cues for particular rewards, as when a miser wishes to handle and count the physical money as coins or notes in the hand, motivated to feel these mere cues or symbols, above and beyond possessing the monetary wealth. And perhaps to be motivated to obtain mere symbols is not unknown even among academics.
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Brain bases of incentive salience
Incentive salience is generated chiefly by subcortical brain circuits, especially a circuit called the mesocorticolimbic dopamine system or simply the mesolimbic dopamine system (Figure 2). As the name implies, its most prominent neurotransmitter is dopamine, although other neurotransmitters also are important including opioids (natural brain neurochemicals similar to poppy-derived opiate drugs like opium, heroin or morphine), glutamate and GABA. We have often used dopamine and opioid activations in mesolimbic structures to turn on incentive salience in our laboratory.
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Addiction and incentive-sensitization
Human drug addiction may be a special illustration of intense “wanting” that results from permanent sensitization of mesocorticolimbic systems (Robinson & Berridge, 1993; Robinson & Berridge, 2003). Sensitized “wanting” may rise to quite irrational levels. That is, the intensity of cue-triggered “wanting” to take drugs for brain-sensitized addicts could outstrip their “liking” even for pleasant drugs, outstrip their expectation of how much they will like the drugs, and outlast any feelings of withdrawal if they stop. Brain-sensitized addicts may be unable to give a reason for their drug taking in such a case. Indeed, there is no reason, there is only a cause for why they “want” so much.
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“Liking”: Hedonic hotspots for generating pleasure
Different from “wanting” is “liking” or the core process of hedonic pleasure. In our hands, brain manipulations that cause “liking” almost always cause “wanting” too. This perhaps mirrors their close association in daily life. But many manipulations that cause “wanting”, as described above, fail to cause a match in “liking”. The brain appears relatively recalcitrant to stimulation of pleasure, unless exactly the right hedonic systems are activated.
What are the neural bases of pleasure “liking” itself? A much more restricted brain circuit appears to mediate hedonic “liking” rather than incentive “wanting” (Peciña, Smith, & Berridge, 2006; Smith et al., 2009).
The generation of pleasure “liking” is more restricted neurochemically: opioid stimulation but not dopamine stimulation in some limbic strutures can enhance “liking” (whereas “wanting” is enhanced by both).
“Liking” is also more restricted anatomically: enhanced by opioid “hotspots” but not by the rest of the same limbic structures (even if the entire structure can enhance “wanting”).
And “liking” generation is also more restricted as a brain circuit, requiring unanimous activation of multiple hotspots simultaneously (whereas “wanting” can be enhanced by a single hotspot).
In short, enhancement of pleasure “liking” is restricted and fragile, and brain pleasure systems are relatively recalcitrant to activation compared to “wanting” systems.
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Conclusion
In sum, “wanting” a reward is distinct from “liking” the same reward. The two usually converge, but can sometimes diverge. When dissociations occur, most notably, “wanting” can become unjustifiably high, as in addiction. The identity of incentive salience as a distinct module within desire creates conditions under which in some cases incentive salience creates a compulsive “wanting” that exceeds the expected goodness of the outcome, persists in the face of a sincere cognitive intention to do the opposite, and is not matched by actual pleasure of the outcome in the end. Incentive salience can detach from intentionality in the form of cognitive goals, and attach to percepts that are associated with incentives, sometimes pulling “wanting” in odd directions. Incentive salience might also attach to particular actions, as well as to stimuli, creating urges to act that are as motivationally compelling as any external incentive. Finally, incentive salience provides a mechanism for temptation, but perhaps not a new challenge to philosophers of free will.
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This incentive salience "want module" often operates out of conscious awareness, as unconscious impulses, which was referred to in an earlier post as something "that happens". Of course, these impulses can then be acted on consciously, or sometimes in a dissociated state.
Anyway, hopefully this information will be help to distinguish between (potentially) addictive activities and other pleasurable sensations.
