Or why "Tell me why I don't like Mondays" has more to do with what's going on in our head than what happens Monday morning in bed?
According to David J. Linden, professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, chief editor of the Journal of Neurophysiology and Author of the book The Compass of Pleasure, for us humans (and probably for other primates and for cetaceans as well), even mere ideas can activate the pleasure circuit. Our eclecticism where pleasure is concerned serves to make our human existence wonderfully rich and complex.
Best known for it's role in sexual production and often referred to as the love hormone, oxytocin is a neuropeptide, and together with vasopressin the only known hormones excreted by the posterior pituary gland with an impact on distal organs and systems, but much more common in direct response to anything that make us feel good.
It's role in addiction is best understood in view of the genetic variations that exist between people which is believed to result in a chronic deficiency. All individuals that fall below the normal distribution of a standard bell curve would in all probability be oxytocin deficient, and therefore be prone to addictive behaviour. Behaviour that made the Boomtown Rats song famous for asking why we hate Monday's.
Because 5 day work weeks aren't nice, that's why!
We humans have a complicated and ambivalent relationship to pleasure, which we spend an enormous amount of time and resources pursuing. A key motivator of our lives, pleasure is central to learning, for we must find things like food, water, and sex rewarding in order to survive and pass our genetic material to the next generation. Certain forms of pleasure are accorded special status. Many of our most important rituals involving prayer, music, dance, and meditation produce a kind of transcendent pleasure that has become deeply ingrained in human cultural practice.
According to David J. Linden, professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, chief editor of the Journal of Neurophysiology and Author of the book The Compass of Pleasure, for us humans (and probably for other primates and for cetaceans as well), even mere ideas can activate the pleasure circuit. Our eclecticism where pleasure is concerned serves to make our human existence wonderfully rich and complex.Evolution has, in effect, hardwired us to catch a pleasure buzz from a wide variety of experiences from crack to cannabis, from meditation to masturbation, from Bordeaux to beef.According to all sources, feeling good is the reason why we do just about everything, and the reason we do is the same for bonding, cuddling, orgasm, play, altruism, addiction, or every sinful pleasure we dare imagine. Oxytocin, or more precise the lack of it is on it's own the sole and only cause for most of our modern day dreary and blues.
Best known for it's role in sexual production and often referred to as the love hormone, oxytocin is a neuropeptide, and together with vasopressin the only known hormones excreted by the posterior pituary gland with an impact on distal organs and systems, but much more common in direct response to anything that make us feel good.
It's role in addiction is best understood in view of the genetic variations that exist between people which is believed to result in a chronic deficiency. All individuals that fall below the normal distribution of a standard bell curve would in all probability be oxytocin deficient, and therefore be prone to addictive behaviour. Behaviour that made the Boomtown Rats song famous for asking why we hate Monday's.
Because 5 day work weeks aren't nice, that's why!
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| Dark blue is less than one standard deviation from the mean. For the normal distribution, this accounts for about 68% of the set, while two standard deviations from the mean (medium and dark blue) account for about 95%, and three standard deviations (light, medium, and dark blue) account for about 99.7% |
