Pleasure - online puzzles

Pleasure is a broad class of mental states that humans and other conscious animals experience as positive, enjoyable, or worth seeking. It includes more specific mental states such as happiness, entertainment, enjoyment, ecstasy, and euphoria. The early psychological concept of pleasure, the pleasure principle, describes it as a positive feedback mechanism that motivates the organism to recreate the situation it has just found pleasurable, and to avoid past situations that caused pain.The experience of pleasure is subjective and different individuals experience different kinds and amounts of pleasure in the same situation. Many pleasurable experiences are associated with satisfying basic biological drives, such as eating, exercise, hygiene, sleep, and sex. The appreciation of cultural artifacts and activities such as art, music, dancing, and literature is often pleasurable.Based upon the incentive salience model of reward – the attractive and motivational property of a stimulus that induces approach behavior and consummatory behavior – an intrinsic reward has two components: a "wanting" or desire component that is reflected in approach behavior, and a "liking" or pleasure component that is reflected in consummatory behavior. While all pleasurable stimuli are rewards, some rewards do not evoke pleasure.

Neuropsychology

Neural substrates

Pleasure is a component of reward, but not all rewards are pleasurable (e.g., money does not elicit pleasure unless this response is conditioned). Stimuli that are naturally pleasurable, and therefore attractive, are known as intrinsic rewards, whereas stimuli that are attractive and motivate approach behavior, but are not inherently pleasurable, are termed extrinsic rewards. Extrinsic rewards (e.g., money ) are rewarding as a result of a learned association with an intrinsic reward. In other words, extrinsic rewards function as motivational magnets that elicit "wanting", but not "liking" reactions once they have been acquired.The reward system contains pleasure centers or hedonic hotspots – i.e., brain structures that mediate pleasure or "liking" reactions from intrinsic rewards.