On this listserve, it seems to me it's only Charles now who isn't sold on BDSM. :-> But you know some people feel cooler when there are acting as if they were in a minority even where they are the majority.
Now, for Charles, here's a primer on pain and pleasure: scientists say pain and pleasure work with the same brain chemical and activate the same part of the brain.
<http://focus.hms.harvard.edu/2001/Dec14_2001/research_briefs.html>
Pain and Pleasure Activate Same Brain Structures
The notion of a fine line between pain and pleasure is finding support in biology, according to a new report by Massachusetts General Hospital researchers. David Borsook and his colleagues have discovered that circuits in the brain that are responsible for reacting to pleasurable experiences also respond to painful ones.
<http://focus.hms.harvard.edu/2001/Dec14_2001/brains.jpg> The same areas of the brain (highlighted above) respond to both painful and pleasurable stimuli. Images courtesy of David Borsook
Even more surprising, some of the circuits associated with reward appear to react more quickly to hurtful stimuli than do the sensory areas of the brain traditionally associated with pain. The findings appear in the Dec. 6 Neuron.
The idea for the study arose in part out of Borsook's experience as a clinician. "Over 15 years of seeing patients with pain it became obvious that we do not have good methods of assessing chronic pain," said Borsook, HMS associate professor of radiology. "And we do not have good methods for treating it."
<http://www.umich.edu/~urecord/0607/Oct30_06/08.shtml> Study shows brain's pleasure chemical is involved in response to pain, too By Kara Gavin U-M Health System Public Relations
For years, dopamine has been thought of as the brain's pleasure chemical, sending signals between brain cells in a way that rewards a person or animal for one activity or another.
More recently, research has shown that certain drugs like cocaine and heroin amplify this effect—an action that may lie at the heart of drug addiction.
Now, a new U-M study adds a new twist to dopamine's fun-loving reputation: pain.
Using sophisticated brain scanning and a carefully controlled way of inducing muscle pain, researchers show that the brain's dopamine system is highly active while someone experiences pain, and that this response varies between individuals in a way that relates directly to how the pain makes them feel. It's the first time that dopamine has been linked to pain response in humans.
The finding, published in the Oct. 18 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, may help explain why people are more likely to acquire a drug addiction during times of intense stress in their lives. It also may yield clues to why some chronic pain patients may be prone to developing addictions to certain pain medications.
It also gives further evidence that vulnerability to drug addiction is a very individual phenomenon—one that can't be predicted by current knowledge of genetics and physiology.
"It appears from our study that dopamine acts as an interface between stress, pain and emotions, or between physical and emotional events, and that it's activated with both positive and negative stimuli," says senior author Dr. Jon-Kar Zubieta, professor of psychiatry and radiology at the Medical School and a member of the Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute (MBNI) and the Depression Center. "It appears to act as a mechanism that responds to the salience of a stimuli—the importance of it to the individual—and makes it relevant for them to respond to."
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
