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Overview

Have you ever wondered why some things are so pleasurable? And why some things are addictive, while others are not?

As neuroscience has recently shown, there are several structures in the brain that work together to create pleasure. These include parts of the cortex and hypothalamus, as well as areas deep inside the brain. The resulting feeling is often surprising because it’s not always obvious how these different structures interact to create a pleasurable experience.

In this article, you will learn why cigarettes are more addictive than heroin; the difference between sex and love; and what running and cannabis have in common.

Big Idea #1: Pleasurable experiences activate the brain’s medial forebrain pleasure circuit.

Although we might perceive activities like eating chocolate cake, having sex and taking heroin as different things, they all activate the pleasure circuit in the brain. So although these activities are perceived to be different, they have a commonality in that sense.

The human brain has a structure called the ventral tegmental area (VTA). When we experience something pleasurable, the neurons in this part of the brain release dopamine to another part of our brains that controls our emotions.

Dopamine is also sent to the dorsal striatum, a structure that’s responsible for learning habits. So when you eat delicious food, you’ll enjoy it and want more of it. Our attempts to repeatedly experience certain kinds of pleasure lead to bad eating habits and addictions. In this way, our medial forebrain pleasure circuit strongly influences our behavior. Scientists have examined this relationship through studies where the pleasure circuit is deliberately stimulated.

One study was highly controversial, and its findings have been contested to this day. It took place in the 1970s at Tulane University by Dr. Robert Galbraith Heath. He wanted to discover if a homosexual man could derive pleasure from heterosexual intercourse by electrically stimulating his pleasure circuit.

Heath’s colleague, Dr. William Kroger, recruited a gay man who had never experienced pleasurable sensations during sexual relations with women—a complete failure as far as he was concerned.

In one of his experiments, Heath implanted electrodes into a subject’s brain and claimed that the subject was able to ejaculate during intercourse with a female lab assistant. Afterwards, Heath said that he had sex with another woman on top of the experiment.

Although the study was limited to short-term behavior, it shows that direct stimulation of certain portions of the brain can influence one’s actions.

Big Idea #2: Addiction is shaped by the way in which a drug gives pleasure – and by its availability.

We now know that activities that are enjoyable increase the activity of our pleasure circuit. However, not all these activities have the same effect on it. Some things stimulate it more strongly than others, which makes the activity itself more addictive. Heroin has a powerful impact on our pleasure circuit and thus carries a higher risk of addiction than weaker drugs like cannabis. Drugs such as LSD carry little to no risk of addiction because they don’t activate the pleasure circuit at all. Still, neurology isn’t everything in terms of addiction; for example, 80% percent people who try cigarettes become addicted while only 35% percent continue using heroin after trying it once. Why is that? Of course, heroin is illegal while cigarettes aren’t so we’re bound to be more susceptible to smoking than shooting up! The availability and attitudes towards drugs are hugely influential factors in whether or not you get addicted.