Prescott, Pearce, Mendizza - Pleasure Bonds
Pleasure and happiness provide the “glue” that attach and bond human relationships. We are attracted to experiences that generate pleasure and disassociate from those that cause physical or emotional pain. Pleasure and its subsequent bonding integrate brain development. Pain prevents this integration. Pleasure and pain are the primary sensory systems for socialization, which are encoded first in the emotional-social-sexual brain and later in the cognitive, rational, thinking brain. The encoding and early integration of these two brain systems through pleasure or their fragmentation through pain give rise to a self-world view that shapes individual life and culture. The moral definition and use of pleasure and pain by culture represents the cause and effect of this brain encoding process.