Libro affascinante. Sarà che mi lascio catturare facilmente da questi argomenti, ma davvero non riuscivo a smettere di leggere.

Essenzialmente l'autore spiega nel dettaglio come e perché proviamo piacere, in che modo sia quest'ultimo a guidare ogni nostra azione volontaria, dal mangiare un piatto di pasta, al fare beneficenza, passando per il sesso. Dalla ricerca del piacere alla dipendenza il passo è però molto breve, viene quindi spiegato in che modo si sviluppa una dipendenza e analizzati i su More...

I learned a lot from this text. In fact, the neuroscience basics I learned in this book are now helping me with a very neuroscience-y science fiction book I've just picked up by Catharine Asaro.

This book is actually about more than addictions. It's about brain chemistry and how naturally humans interact with substances and experiences, before the introduction of addiction into the equation. The author writes in a very accessible style - I only got lost in the acronyms and neuron-specific verbs More...

Insightful discussions on pleasure, addiction, and societal implications can be found here. The level of scientific language may put off the typical layperson. Reads like an abstract of a scientific paper in some sections, with too much repetition of phrases of substances involved, which is an attempt to be precise but often just clutters the landscape and hinders clean absorption of the material. Historical sections are much more reader-friendly, interesting, and provocative, showing how fluid More...

Loy Machedo’s Book Review: The Compass of Pleasure by David J. Linden

Ever since I read books on the Human Mind & Human Behavior notably by authors like Jonah Lehrer, Malcom Galdwell, Dan Aierly, Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner and Sam Harris, I have become deeply fascinated with the world of Neuroscience, Cognitive Science and Psychology.

In a Nutshell, what this book is about?
A Scientific explanation to why we are addicted to the following:
1. Sex
2. Unhealthy & Rich Food
3. Exercise
4 More...

I bought this book in Idaho Falls on my way to a camping/biking vacation. That was a few years ago.

This is a very slim book, but there is a lot of information about the latest scientific findings related to the pleasure circuits in our brains (and the brains of mice, rats, and various monkeys).

It turns out that all of the drugs that we know and love, like heroin, cocaine, nicotine, THC, caffeine, and speed, directly affect the pleasure centers of our brain. And depending on how these drugs are i More...

David Linden was the chair of my thesis committee, so perhaps part of my enjoyment of this book was the vivid, imagined sense of his witty teaching style and mannerisms as I was reading. In his writing as in real life, Linden is casual and joking but with an undercurrent of intense enthusiasm and precision.

The Compass of Pleasure was a fantastic introduction to the brain circuitry underlying our ability to feel pleasure and an astute scientific discussion of how the ability to feel pleasure gui More...

*Likely to activate your brain's pleasure circuit*

The _Compass of Pleasure_ directs the reader straight to an understanding of the neuroscience underlying human pleasure, transcendent experience, and addiction.

Although the science presented in the book does tend to get a bit detailed at times (there's no dumbing down here!), the central story of pleasure is clear: humans feel pleasure when neurons in a region of the brain called the medial forebrain pleasure circuit are stimulated. As the autho More...

2011 Book 127/100

This book that examines the ways that our brains experience and register pleasure had some fascinating information such as explanations of nasal intercourse of bottlenose dolphins in the Amazon, a discussion of Siberian reindeer that seek out the hallucinogenic urine from other deer that have ingested the mushroom Amanita Muscaria, and the physical reasons that Parkinson's Disease sufferers may be less likely to gamble, but there is a LOT of science to wade through in the pursui More...

This book is an excellent book, but not for the faint of heart. It is basically a conversation with a neurophysiologist about how pleasure works, and the author has no problem delving into the jargon, acronyms, and experimental design of neuroscience to get an accurate description across. If you're expecting science writing with the popular accessibility of Mary Roach or even Michael Shermer, you're likely to be disappointed. Because of that, I gave it 3 stars as a "for-the-general-public" ratin More...

Yet another PopCog book.

They’re coming in so fast and furious now that the New York Times has to review ’em in batches. Check out Is the Brain Good at What It Does? to read reviews of this one, plus two others.

The first, Brain Bugs: How the Brain’s Flaws Shape Our Lives gets a pretty nice review, but I’d already learned of it from NPR. The second, Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn gets slammed royally.

But The Compass of Pleasure More...

Added 10/15/11
Found at:
NY Times Book Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/boo...
NY Times Books Update (list): http://www.nytimes.com//indexes/2011/...

Excerpt from review linked above:
=================================
"In his book “The Compass of Pleasure,” the Johns Hopkins neurobiologist David J. Linden explicates the workings of these regions, known collectively as the reward system, elegantly drawing on sources ranging from personal experience to studies of brain activity to experiments w More...

So, I don't mind picking up a pop-science book, as long as it has an interesting topic and I don't have to read much science. This one was definitely interesting, and as for the science, well - I did end up skipping paragraphs that got a bit too detailed for me.

I suppose it's obvious that our brain does things that we have no direct, conscious control over, but it was still; fascinating to think that although we believe we have free will/willpower, that is no match for our biology. And though we More...

Linden describes experiments exciting the brain's ventral tegmental area (VTA)--the medial forebrain pleasure circuit. He posits that addiction is associated with long-lasting changes in the electrical, morphological, and biochemical functions of the neurons and synaptic connections in the medial forebrain pleasure circuit. Linden explains how not only drugs but also exercise, meditation or prayer, receiving social approval, sex, eating, and even donating to charity can become addictive.

Although More...

The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good by David J. Linden

"The Compass of Pleasure" is an interesting although uneven book dealing with the science of pleasure. This book deals with a diverse range of experiences of pleasure that activate biochemically defined pleasure circuit in the brain. Award winning author of "The Accidental Mind", neuroscientist and professor, David J. Linden takes the rea More...

A very fun and accessible tome on neuroscience.

Con tutta probabilità la parola che si ripete con maggior frequenza nel testo è: dopamina. E' il principale neurotrasmettitore responsabile dello stato di piacere ma, come una principessina capricciosa e viziata, tiene tutto il sistema in scacco. La sua mancanza o il suo eccesso portano a disequilibri comportamentali in cui il piacere diventa necessità, creando dipendenza.

Questo testo spiega con precisione scientifica e spesso con la simpatia dell'autore, le ultime indagini su animali e sull'uom More...

Linden talks about addiction from a purely scientific perspective, without the typical society prejudice. Honestly, I didn't know there was so much information researched thoroughly on it out there. And wow, there is so much we don't know. But truly, addiction seems to really be a hardwired, genetic brain issue for the most part. There is a lot of interesting insight in this book.

So should I still wait until I am 80 like I have always said to do drugs? Here is my answer. Marijuana is just as add More...

As the British addiction expert Griffith Edwards says, "A lot of what drugs do to the mind is in the mind."

--

Addiction is not just a disease of weak-willed losers. Indeed, many of our most important historical figures have been drug addicts - not only the creative, arty types like Charles Baudelaire (hashish and opium) and Aldous Huxley (alcohol, mescaline, LSD), but also scientists like Sigmund Freud (cocaine) and hard-charging military leaders and heads of state from Alexander the Great (a mas More...

Not a bad science book if you're in the market on a science book. I sort of was--although I'm not especially interested in science, I'm interested in the brain. I got tired of the science after a bit, but Linden's writing is commendably accessible and funny. It did catch me off guard that he referred to female arousal as "getting wet" though... If this had been my book I'd have been tempted to make such little self-indulgences too, but if you're going to self-indulge in a book on neuroscience, y More...

David J. Linden examines the nature of addiction by concentrating on substances that have been historically accepted as addictive, such as alcohol, nicotine, drugs, along with disputable addictions such as sex, overspending, among others. Linden’s main reason for examining such addictions, arguably, lies in his desire to show the complex nature of these addictions and how they interact with one’s brain chemistry in order to create addiction. With the use of scientific research, Linden clearly sh More...

Fascinating. Linden explains very complex medical information in an understandable way. It was good to hear that character has little to do with the "pleasure network of the brain." Personal choice comes into it when the diagnoses is made and the individual decides on the path of further destruction or finding other ways to activate neurons in the pleasure network. Especially interesting was that we can activate pleasure neurons from abstract thoughts. It is something we know, you feel good when More...

The title of this book is a synopsis of itself. Linden interprets recent findings from neuroscience research papers for the rest of us. Yet, I don't recommend this for a general audience because he is still specific about neuro transmitters, substrates,receptors, and the research done by others that some readers may lose interest. I appreciate that he read these papers on my behalf and offers his conclusions. He does not overreach with solutions for us humans when he suggests that we would be he More...

The author, David Linden, writes in the acknowledgements that "conveying scientific information in a clear and engaging manner is a difficult business," and as a nonscientific layperson, I believe that he failed in this endeavor. I'm no dummy; I have a masters in a social science discipline from an ivy league institution, but the neuroscience in this was way beyond me. There were some very interesting data sprinkled throughout, but on the whole I found the book to be a mind-numbing quagmire. Too More...

Focused on neuroscientific explanation of physiological mechanisms of pleasure, particularly dopamine circuits, and addictions. Though the book is organized into chapters around the topics listed in the subtitle, each topic is just a another way to look at Linden's main underlying theses, and those (e.g. the addiction process) are of primary interest and worth pondering over. The individual topic chapters then vary in quality based on how strongly the underlying idea is presented, and I think th More...

After hearing the author discuss this book on Fresh Air, I really wanted to like it. Unfortunately, the book didn't really provide much more than I got from the 20 minute interview, though not for lack of trying. The gist of the book is that the pleasure centers in our brain can be modified through ongoing exposure to pleasurable activities. Why? Well, we're not quite sure. Much of it is genetic.

That's basically what the book says, and it would have made a terrific magazine article. The author, More...

Brilliant. It's rich with sciencey jargon but I consider that a compliment to the reader instead of a fault of the author. It gives vivid descriptions of the goings on of the parts of the brain that make us love the things we love (and occasionally become addicted to them) and describes the techniques the nueroscience folks are using to figure it out. Wildly insightful stuff and some very interesting conclusions at the end addressing how pleasure will surely be more intentionally controlled in t More...

This is fairly easy read on the scientific explanation of how addiction works. Sadly, it makes addiction all the more frightening once you understand it. I heard the author speak and he does a great job giving examples from different types of addictions in a story like fashion. The book reads the same. The clear take home message is that although addiction is caused by a similar pattern of events in the brain...all addictions are not equal. They all don't bear the same consequences in social mea More...

Linden has shouldered the thankless job of making the neuroscience of pleasure accessible to the layperson. His approach is beguiling. The pleasure circuit – an image of grade school science: A switch, ion flow, light bulb – springs immediately to mind. Innocuously, he introduces the VTA (ventral tegmental area of the brain), and a flow of ions and chemicals stimulating or inhibiting areas in other parts of the brain: the nucleus accumbens, medial forebrain bundle, septum, thalamus and hypothala More...

Heed the warnings: it's definitely textbooky. But I found it to be so in an engaging and intellectually stimulating (read: good) way. It took me back to the most interesting readings of my undergrad years. Seriously, he had me at "necessary but not sufficient." "Correlation but not causation" was icing on the cake.

That said, I wish I could bump it down half a star for its stylistic inconsistencies. While the research was thoroughly explained in ways that I took to be technically accurate, it was More...