NEUROSCIENCE OF PAIN & PLEASURE: An Exploration into BDSM

DESCRIPTION

Why does pain feel pleasurable? What neural pathways and hormones are involved in pain and pleasure?

BDSM offers a unique lens through which to examine the neuroscience of pain and pleasure. While pain is traditionally seen as a negative stimulus and pleasure as a positive one, BDSM disrupts this binary, showing how pain can be pleasurable. This class will explore the neurobiological, psychological, and evolutionary underpinnings of BDSM experiences, examining how pain interacts with the brain’s reward, pleasure, and stress systems.

The neuroscientific investigation of pain has undergone substantial revision in recent decades. Newer models emphasize pain not as a direct readout of peripheral nociceptive input, but as an inference constructed by the brain through perceptual awareness of sensory inputs, expectations and contextual information. This constructivist view of pain perception provides a theoretical foundation for understanding how identical nociceptive stimuli can produce radically different subjective experiences depending on the context in which they occur.

This class examines the neurobiological mechanisms of pain and pleasure. We will discuss reward pathways, pain processing error and reward predictability. We will also delve into the role played by different neurotransmitters.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. At the end of the session, attendees will be able to explain the neural mechanisms of pain and pleasure
2. At the end of the session, attendees will be able to critically evaluate role of reward prediction error and pain prediction error in reinforcement learning.

EDUCATOR BIO