I have to take this one out again and finish it- fascinating stuff! ( )

An interesting read on the subject of why we find things pleasurable and also why some become addicted, whether it be drugs, alcohol, food. Pitched at just the right level to be accessible to both readers with a background in science and those without. ( )

I started this ebook quite a while ago, but found it so technical in its details on brain chemistry that it took me many episodes to work my way through it. Ultimately, it was more about pleasure centers and addiction than anything else. Good technical information but not quite what I was looking for. ( )

A very interesting book that strikes a good balance between scientific jargon and plain English. Although I find some sections to be a bit unnecessarily technical and replete with acronyms and technical jargon, these sections last only for about half a page and can be skipped over without losing continuity.

There is a plethora of interesting information about addiction and about the role of our pleasure circuit - some of it we have known for centuries, some of it is new. This is an exciting area of research with much promise about the future of humanity and it is very exciting to be a witness of it. It sounds like we may not be far from a cure to substance and behavioural addictions.

The last chapter on the future of research related to the pleasure circuits of our brain raises some interesting philosophical questions. The author describes the development of a baseball cap that would allow its user to control the type of pleasure that is being experienced the same way that one controls a cooking recipe - a bit of an orgasmic pleasure, with a dash of jumping off the cliff pleasure, and a bit of pain to make it more salient - without the addiction. That is the baseball cap will be able to decouple the experience of pleasure from it becoming addictive. The author raises a number of questions regarding the baseball cap, such as the survival and meaning of our desires and the pleasure we presently derive from ideas. But it would have been very useful if the author had also investigated the implications of the cap for our definition of addiction. If one can derive any type of pleasure it desires, and some that we don't even know we desire, at any point in time, what will be the point of, say, going to work? Raising a family? Curing a disease? Building a house? Talking to your friends? The pleasures that are derived from these activities can now be stimulated by the baseball cap! Would there then be an incentive to ever removing the cap? And if one does nothing else but play around with pleasure recipes all day long, would that make this person an addict - not in a clinical sense as the cap would have decoupled the addiction cycle of tolerance, craving, withdrawal and relapse - but in a cognitive sense, since using the cap will generate the most efficient, cost effective and consistent pleasure than any other human activity? ( )

It was better than The Left-Hander's Syndrome. I wish I could read Mr. Linden's first book, so this desire must be a good sign! ( )