The Compass of Pleasure by David Linden

The book has the intriguing subtitle ' How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Vodka, Learning and Gambling Feel So Good'. A little of each is pleasurable, a lot leads to addiction, and this book is here to tell us why that is. Linden is a nueroscientist and he does a good job of making a complex body of reasearch understandgble to those of us who do not wade through the science everyday.
Linden explains that there are variants in genes that turn down the function of dopamine signaling within the pleasure circuit. For people who carry these gene variants, their muted dopamine systems lead to blunted pleasure circuits, which in turn affects their pleasure-seeking activities, he says.
While most people are able to achieve a certain degree of pleasure with only moderate indulgence, those with blunted dopamine systems are driven to overdo it, just to get to the smae degree of pleasure. Understanding the biology of the pleasure circuit helps us better understand and treat addiction, Linden says. It is important to realize that our pleasure circuits are the result of a combination of genetics, stress and life experience, beginning as early as the womb--there but for the grace of god go I is the take home message.
This is more of a pleasure book (double entendre intended) than a text book. Linden does take us through the scientific method that was behind the research, so we are able to see the balance--the things that are more certain and those that are lees so, what the scientific method is that allows conclusions to be drawn, but it is more chatty and less dry than you would see in a more scientifically rigorous book.