The Neuroscience of Pleasure in Pole Dance

Show Notes:

In this episode of 'Science of Slink,' Dr. Rosy Boa delves into the neuroscience behind pleasure, particularly in the context of dance. She explains the hedonic system, how pleasure systems function, and the specific attributes that make dance so enjoyable. Dr. Boa also shares practical takeaways for dancers to enhance their pleasure in dancing, and announces upcoming Q&A episodes.

Chapters:

01:16 Understanding Pleasure Systems

02:36 The Neuroscience of Pleasure

12:57 Pleasure and Dance

19:30 Practical Takeaways for Dancers

22:49 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Citations

Berridge, K. C., & Kringelbach, M. L. (2015). Pleasure systems in the brain. Neuron, 86(3), 646-664.

Kringelbach, M. L., & Berridge, K. C. (2017). The affective core of emotion: Linking pleasure, subjective well-being, and optimal metastability in the brain. Emotion Review, 9(3), 191-199.

Poikonen, H., Toiviainen, P., & Tervaniemi, M. (2016). Early auditory processing in musicians and dancers during a contemporary dance piece. Scientific Reports, 6(1), 33056.

Vander Elst, O. F., Vuust, P., & Kringelbach, M. L. (2021). Sweet anticipation and positive emotions in music, groove, and dance. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 39, 79-84.

Transcript:

Introduction and Announcements

Welcome to Science of Slength, the Evidence Based Pole Podcast. It's me, your host, Dr. Rosie Boa. That is a science doctor, not a medical doctor. None of this is medical advice. And today we're going to be talking about pleasure pleasure in, in a weird voice. I know some of y'all are L2, L3, L4, L5 English speakers.

So I should maybe be a little bit less playful with my language in the interests of Understandability.

But before we get into that, I do want to really quickly let you know I'm gonna have some Q& A episodes coming up, so if you got any questions about anything like science y, nerdy, Pole questions, anything like that send them my way, right?

So, if you're definitely on Spotify, on YouTube, I see those comments Apple, sometimes I see them, sometimes I don't. You can find me on Instagram, Blue Sky , lots of different places. Feel free to reach out. You can also email me info at slinkthroughstrength. com. Yeah, and I've already got some really good questions that I'm very excited to answer, but I'm looking, I'm looking for a couple more.

So, if there's been anything where you've been like, hmm, I wonder and you want to send me off like your little, your little research I was going to say ferret. I feel like ferrets would be pretty good at research.  Off to rummage through the literature and see what I can find or, you know, draw on my own experience, because unfortunately for a lot of things in Pole there just isn't any literature.

There is the experiences of people who have done it. Yeah. Hit me up.

Understanding Pleasure Systems

And with that, let's get into today's episode. So, pleasure. And I'm just gonna let you know, if this is literature that you're like, wow, this is so cool. I want to dig into this deeper. I also want to do some reading. Always encouraged.

That's why I give you citations, right? I am, I am learning from and drawing from the literature. I am not, you know, a world renowned expert on any of the specific topics we talk about. I do try to talk to folks who, who are, but Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you do dig into this literature, a lot of the pleasure literature is on addiction specifically so just know that going in, which makes a lot of sense because you know, addiction is Due to a, not necessarily a malfunction, but certainly non optional use of the pleasure systems and reward systems.

So what are those pleasure systems? What are those reward systems? And what does that mean for dance specifically? Because there has been some research done on this, right? Like, why does dance feel good? How can we make dance feel better? That's always what I want to know. And also, what are some takeaways that we as pole dancers can use from the research in our own practice, our own movement to make it better?

Make it feel better! Because I, listen, I don't know if you knew this I'm a big fan of pleasure, and feeling good, and having a nice time, and I think that especially with your movement, especially with things that you're doing in your leisure and your recreation, that should be centered. That should be a big, important, middle part of why you do what you do, because it feels good.

So.  Let's hop into it a little bit.

The Neuroscience of Pleasure

So a lot of the sort of first chunk that I'm talking about is from Berridge and Krinklebach 2015 Pleasure Systems in the Brain in Neuron. They get real deep into the, the neuroscience, the nitty gritty, and like, the specific areas and pathways and receptors.

I'm not going to, if you want to. Please, please feel free. But I'm, I'm not getting that deep. But very good review article of sort of like our current state of understanding and draws together a lot of different research.  There's a little quote I want to read from this.

" In a sense pleasure can be thought of as evolution's boldest trick, serving to motivate an individual to pursue rewards necessary for fitness" and to be clear that is not physical fitness.  Common misconception when we talk about fitness in an evolution sense, what we mean is how well you fit into your environment not how buff you are.

Because in a lot of instances having, you know,  let's say you take it as like, oh, fitness is, you know, I'm the strongest and the biggest and the fastest and the, you know, best at lifting things. Well, in situations where there are constrained resources an organism that is that thing may in fact not be particularly fit, right?

Or for social CCs. Like us, humans, we're social. We're not you social, but we are social. Fitness includes how well do you work with other members of your community? How well do you fit in? So fitness is not just like as an individual, how swole you are.  Common misconception, bothers me every single time.

Probably you too. I don't know, it's probably review for a lot of you. Just in case it's not, I think, worth picking it up. Right, so pleasure helps organisms be more fit into their environment, helps them do things that help them survive.  Yet, continuing the quote here, in modern environments, abundance also inducing maladaptive pursuits such as addictions.

And I think this is something that there's been a lot of discussion about recently in particular, as there's been a lot of legislation around social media,  because a lot of the design principles behind social media apps are really designed to make them as pleasurable as possible, right? And particularly to We'll talk about this, right, but, like, really focus on that wanting part of the pleasure cycle, which makes you keep doing the same behavior over and over, even if you're not necessarily actually enjoying it that much, even if you don't actually have, like, the liking part of the wanting cycle quite so much, so.

Definitely something that's very topical in the news. And also something that like,  I would like you to not experience particularly when it comes to, to exercise. Because exercise addiction is a real thing. If you find that you are in a position where, you know, you cannot be  at rest when you are not exercising.

Or you have like a quota that you feel like you must meet, and not meeting that quota negatively harms your mental health. I would talk to a mental health professional. That is not Sort of the the type of behavior and sort of mental health experience that I certainly would like my students students to have and I would suggest that there's maybe something going on there that you should get some more support with.

I've been, I've been hitting these systems. What are they? So these are called, this is, this part of the brain and these sort of like interconnected things. Everything's connected in the brain. That's kind of, that's kind of its whole thing. I don't know if you knew about neurons. I'm sure you do. It's the hedonic system.

And it does seem that there is a central system and that this reward cycle is used across a wide variety of different inputs, right? So Food,  right? You know, other types of physical pleasure, like sex dance, listening to music, social interaction, it seems like a lot of the things that we enjoy, the process of enjoyment and the, the neural mechanisms of enjoyment are shared across those processes, right?

So it's not like we have a, food is delicious and I want to eat it section like over here in this part of the brain, and then in another section part of the brain we're like and this is where we think about.  You know looking at videos of puppies, right? It's the same thing, it's used for all of these different inputs.

Or at least that seems to be the current understanding of the literature. And the system has actually three distinct parts. So, the first part is liking. This is actual enjoyment. It's opposed to disgust. And this is something that seems to be very sort of

Both very instinctual, right? Like, it's something that even infants and non human animals do engage in, right? Like, have you ever seen, like, a video of somebody giving a dog a lemon and the dog is like, Right? Disgust is something that is an important thing that it seems like.  I don't know much about the invertebrate research on this.

I feel comfortable saying lots of invertebrates, lots of vertebrates do it. I don't know about invertebrates. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. It's outside of my, listen, I don't work on stuff that doesn't have spines. I never have. But certainly lots of invertebrates, lots of vertebrates, but certainly lots of vertebrates do it.

 But, that said, it is mediated by the forebrain. So even though there is sort of like not necessarily learned element to it, there also can be learning associated with it. So this would be something like an acquired taste, like you didn't used to like something and now you do. I'm a, I'm a big coffee person.

I really enjoy coffee. And when I was younger, coffee was quite bitter. Like many young people, I did not like the taste of coffee because, you know, I, I didn't. And then over time I learned to like it and to anticipate it and to enjoy it and to have this liking thing for something I didn't used to like.

So we can learn to like sensations.  It's sort of that that thing. Also, I This is another thing where I see some sort of misconceptions about it. Dopamine, not necessary for liking. Dopamine is about wanting, which is the next part of this cycle. So This is really the motivation process, right?

So liking is like, just core reaction, you know, you're given a stimulus, what's your reaction to the stimulus? Wanting is desiring something and also identifying something and linking the stimulus to that thing, right? And then that linking process we'll talk about later, that's more learning. So this is where, Dopamine hits, right?

This is the chemical mechanisms of desire. And sometimes wanting and liking can become uncoupled, and that's one of those things that potentially is part of the addiction process, right? Or can be about doing behaviors that you don't enjoy doing, right? So folks who have compulsions, right?

They, they want to do something, but they don't necessarily like doing it. So even though these things are closely related and, you know, if things are going the way that they do for most people most of the time, they're linked and there's not a big issue, they can become unlinked from each other.

And then finally we have the learning. So this is where, you know, I had the liking, I had the stimulus, I enjoyed that That creates a sense of desire and motivation within me and I link those two together to create behaviors. So  listen, I, you probably already know this, but just in case you don't, you know, classic operant conditioning things like anticipating a a pleasurable stimulus being linked with another stimulus.

So if you're familiar with the. Pavlovian, Pavlov's dog experiment very, very famous psychology experiment this, this guy, you know, every time he fed the dog, he rang a little bell and eventually when he rang the bell, the dog anticipated the food, even if there was no food. There's a very good Terry Pratchett joke in one of his books where instead of dog food, it's, it's a  egg white dessert. It's a pavlova. Shout out to my Antipodean friends.

Anyway,  little aside there and this is where learning happens, and specifically this learning happens once we are satiated with whatever the stimulus is, right?

So I think we've probably all experienced this with food or drink, right, you're really thirsty, oh, I gotta drink water, and you drink a bottle of water, and then eventually you're like, I don't want water anymore, right? Or with food, right? You eat and then you're full and then you don't want food anymore.

Or with exercise, right? You're like, you're really like, oh, I gotta move. I gotta move my body. Then you move your body a lot and then you're tired and you don't want to move anymore. And it's at this point that we really see the learning process happen. Also you can, you know, reduce how much you like something if you get sick of it.

So maybe if you've listened to the same song.  Well,  I tend to wear songs out very quickly, I tend to listen to them enough that I don't want to listen to them anymore in, you know, maybe a couple weeks. I know some folks never achieve this, right? They never get satiated, they got their favorite song, they put it on, they'll just listen to it on repeat.

 And this is something where I think there's a lot of individual differences, but for some people, having that satiated and having overexposure can actually reduce liking. So it feeds back into the rest of the cycle.  So that's the general principle of the hedonic system.

What about emotions? So,  emotions seem to be much harder to reliably create than something like pleasure. And the sort of, my understanding of the general state of research here is that there's some suggestion that this may be mediated by metastability.

So brains are networks, right? If you're familiar with graph theory, you can think of them as graphs, right? You got nodes and they're connected to each other via edges. And metastability is the quality of a network where when perturbance happens, right, so when there's a big change that the network has to adapt to, it comes back to its sort of homeostasis, well, maybe not necessarily a homeostatic point, but a stable point where it's not continuing to dynamically adjust pretty quickly, right?

Like it has that quality of being able to reset, basically. And there's some suggestion that emotion and pleasure may be interacting with that this, that when we think about that at a neurological level, that may be something of what mediates the relationship between emotion and pleasure.

And more details on that Kringlebach the Affective Core of Emotion, Affective with an A not Effective with an E Linking Pleasure, Subjective Well Being, and Optimal Metastability in the Brain. And I think that this is still fairly new as a research topic so definitely keep an eye on that as as more information comes out.

Pleasure and Dance

And the reason that I bring that in is because I want to talk about dance.  So,  dance has some specific qualities that might make it more pleasurable than other things. So one of the things is that when you are dancing, generally you finish that satiety phase and are ready to go back to liking and wanting before you would with something else.

So if you think about, you know you were, you've been dancing, you're done with the song, you're like, oh, I'm tired, I'm going to set this next one out. Generally, at least for me, I'm ready to get back in there after a couple minutes, whereas if you think about having like a big meal, it's probably going to be a bit longer than that for that rest and digest process to take place and for you to get hungry again.

So the, the satiety phase with dance is much shorter than it is with a lot of other things, particularly a lot of other things that rely on metabolic processes. Which might mean that we can have this cycle a little bit faster which potentially may be what underlies being able to dance for quite a while, right?

So like, in my, my freestyle classes, you dance for most of the hour. I would say we usually spend about maybe 20 minutes total of that hour doing things other than dance, but mostly you're just moving your body, you're just dancing. Another thing that is tied with dance is music. And there is one of the things that can help create pleasure, and also is linked with positive emotions, is prediction.

So, if you're familiar with predictive coding, this is the sort of general theory that when we are interacting with the world, we're getting, you know, Percepts in, we're getting sensations in, we're getting stuff bottom up, people might say from out in the world. And also, we have a model of the world in our brain where we are generating predictions, so it's sort of like top down.

So a good example of this from language is if I say something like, I have to go walk my blank, you might anticipate that I'm going to say something like dog there and if I say something other than dog, right, that's going to give you a little moment of like, oh, that's a surprise, I wasn't expecting that, and you're going to have to like re update your predictions, right, so it's a Bayesian process if you're familiar with Bayesian statistics.

But you, you update your predictions over time and part of the pleasure and something that can give you pleasure is sort of like anticipating what comes next, and this might be potentially what makes music so enjoyable, especially music that comes from a tradition that we're already familiar with, right, because  appreciation and enjoyment of music seems to be fairly common cross culturally, but what music is and what it looks like is fairly diverse cross culturally, right?

So I think a great example here is like, scales, right, in Indian classical music and the Western tradition, not the same, right? Like, the acoustics, like, it's not like the, the way that waveforms work is different in different places in the world, very, very slightly, depending on atmospheric conditions.

But it's not like there's a huge difference on, on how sound works, but there is a difference between cultural expectations of what comes next in music. And so. This prediction of like, ooh, what comes next and how am I going to react to it, may be part of what makes listening to music very pleasurable.

And music that is predictable, but not too predictable, not so predictable that it's boring, but with enough variation that you have to keep engaging with it to keep guessing. Hey, Rosie, that sounds a lot like that sweet spot for flow from the She Sends Me High research that we've talked about quite a bit.

Yeah, it sure does, doesn't it? What a parallel there. And there's also some really interesting evidence that dancers in particular, to a greater degree, even than trained musicians, who have formal musical training, anticipate changes in music, and particularly changes in timbre and can react to it.

faster than either musicians or non musicians. It seems to be something about dance training, something about being exposed to a lot of music and moving to it that creates a sense of anticipation which may be part of what makes dance feel really pleasurable, having that anticipation, fulfillment, anticipation, fulfillment and that cycle, particularly something like freestyle, right, where we are constantly re engaging and re guessing what's going to come next, particularly with music that we haven't heard before.

Might be linked with positive affect, so a good emotion, but also more reliably, more predictably pleasure, right? And like recruitment of this hedonic cycle.  So, that was a lot. But really quickly, just to review what we talked about the hedonic system, sort of the same across or the the general mechanism is the same across a lot of different types of sensory input, not just music, not just dance, not just food not just, you know, physical sensation, pleasure they all seem to work more or less the same way using the same system.

Three distinct parts you have the liking phrase the to, to quote Berridge in Crinkleback, core reactions to hedonic impact, right? So this is liking, disgust. We have the wanting phase, again, quoting here, motivation process of incentive salience, right? Paying attention to the specific thing, right, moving your attention towards it, and having that create a desire to change behavior.

And then finally the learning process, or again quoting, Pavlovian or instrumental associations and cognitive representations. So this is more like higher order learning cognition, not quite as much like fine grain, you know, circuits firing. Circuits are still firing, right? But it's more Although liking is, again, mediated by forebrain stuff, so there is learning that goes on there, but it is more more conceptual.

Emotions, subjective well being, also part of this. It seems like pleasure can lead to positive emotions, but that creating a sense of pleasure is a little bit more Reliable, a little bit easier than creating positive emotions or negative emotions. It's just, emotions are just trickier, right?

They're harder. And finally, how does dance play into this? Well, part of what may make dance for y'all very pleasurable, A we get unsatiated. We're ready to dance again faster than we are to do other pleasurable activities that we might be doing in our life. And also, that anticipation of what's coming next, that is part of listening to music, that is part of groove, which we've talked about before, we'll probably talk about it again, because a lot of the work on improvisation really looks is on music and looks at groove.

And that's part of what makes dance feel pleasurable, right, is that prediction, and then that fulfillment of that prediction, like, yes, I was right, but like, at a very At a very fine grained neurological level, very quickly, over and over and over again. Potentially, maybe something, maybe part of what makes dance feel so good for us.

Practical Takeaways for Dancers

So, takeaways, right? This has just been like a bleh.  This has been a lot of discussion of a lot of research pretty quickly. So what, what do we do from here, right? What, what does this mean for us?  Well, one thing I would say, big takeaway, don't try to focus on changing your emotions, right? If you can bring pleasure into your life through dance and that ends up changing your emotions, fantastic.

We know, particularly we talked about this in an earlier episode, movement can help reduce our stress response it can help elevate positive affects and feelings of well being but changing your mood is just harder than giving yourself some pleasure, right?  Focus on having pleasure, focus on really enjoying that liking phase, really noticing when you are having a nice time, which I think is just a super important skill for us in general, right?

Humans are great at noticing when we're having a bad time and being like, don't want that, gotta change something. I think we're less good at noticing when we're having a nice time, particularly if overall we're sort of in like a more stressed state, so. Notice when you're having fun. This has been one of the things that I've been working on in my life, and just like, saying out loud, but I'm having a nice time.

I'm enjoying this.  And it sounds so dumb, but it is really genuinely helping me notice good things a little bit more. And I hope that you have some good things in your life. And hey, maybe it's this podcast. Maybe you can, you can say to yourself, Yeah, I'm enjoying this as you listen to my, my nerd show.

Also dancing with music, right? I think dancing without music can be a great exercise. It's a great push. If you sign up for my advanced freestyle course that I haven't really talked about yet, that might be something that we play with. Hint, hint.  Little, little, little teaser there. But if you're looking to induce pleasure, probably more music is going to be better.

And also try varying how familiar you are with it. So this is something we actually talked about this in class a while ago. How familiar you are with a piece of music for different people affects how easy it is to freestyle, how easily they connect with it. So some folks really like music they're very familiar with.

Some folks really prefer music they've never heard before in their life and I think it's really helpful to experiment with that for yourself and see, okay, how much prediction do I need to be doing how much prediction do I enjoy doing, and does that change how my dance feels? And also, we talked a little bit about groove.

We know that different types of music have greater or lower degrees of grooviness to them. This is the technical term, by the way. When I say groove here, That is a term of art  in the literature. So we know that like some syncopation, there's like some surprise but not like a huge amount, right? Like not so much that it sounds disorganized and random.

You need to be able to predict, but not so much that you can predict literally everything that's going to happen, right? I'm thinking about like something like dance music where someone drops the beat, right? And they're building anticipation and you're constantly trying to predict, oh, is it now? Is it now?

Is it now? Is it now? I think is a good example of that but  what really connects with you and your body and makes you want to move, because groove is music that makes you want to move really varies from person to person. So try different stuff, try listening to different stuff, and also just pick out on specific things, if you happen to notice them, that are you personally, for yourself, associated with greater groove.

Those are my suggestions for making your dance more pleasurable based on the, the literature that we reviewed today.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

As always, citations in the comments, you know I'm not going to leave you hanging. If  you've got questions for me, pop those in the comments, reach out to me, you know, whatever, whatever makes sense.

I'm really easy to reach out to. I'd love to know what your questions are. I'd love to, to do some little digging for you. And As always, I teach online if you're a home Poleer, or even if you've just got home space to move in. My freestyle flow classes are Pole optional. My conditioning classes, I've got a strength class, a flexibility class, equipment optional.

You can just show up in your gym jams, follow along or do the recording. I always include a recording. You're welcome to come live. You're welcome to do the recording. I would love to have you if you, if you want to move with me. Let's have, let's, let's do some pleasurable movement together because that, that's the point of pole, isn't it?

That's the point of hobby movement and recreation, is to have a nice time. Yeah, and until until next time, I hope that that's what you're up to. Having a nice time, as much as possible. Notice when you're having enjoyment. Find that liking phase. Notice that you're in it. Savor it as much as possible and, and move your body.

And I hope that I will slink with you very soon.  Bye!