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Why do opiates create euphoria?

^^^^^^ I use that legs-walking analogy for a reason... I don't see how anyone could deny it personally. I've ripped on cognitive scientists before, and I really don't want to offend you specialspack, but I mean, although, no it's not a fact, neither in a philosophical or even scientific sense, I can't see anyone debating it with any grounding in physiology...

Meanwhile:
ctivation of mu receptors causes a certain change in the user's brain relative to its previous state, but not to a discernable state that is uniform throughout humans
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Absolutely, certainly the case. While anotomically, everyones brain is generally the same, on a microcircuts level, everyones brain is radically different. Yet, a lot of things, simple "animal" states, like vigalence, arousal, etc... are probabley mediated by simple global changes... For example, although not the be all and end all.. histamine (I suspect, and maybe the orrexins/hypocretins) are probably 90% of the wake/sleep story. Recordings of histaminergic neurons are amazaing to see...:

Put an animal in a novel environment, evolutionary requirement of vigalence, histaminergic cells fire like crazy, animal gets used to novel environment, turn on the lights, animal gets drowsy (can be recorded behavioural, EEG, EMG, heart rate, anything) histaminergic cell firing slows down. The second the animal falls asleep, histaminergic cells stop firing completely... and the second it wakes up again, histaminergic cells go back to mssive firing...


Now of course there are down-stream effects of cortical excitabilility/reactivity on the whole, but the actual cue I don't think will be that complicated.
 
BilZ0r said:
^^^^^^ I use that legs-walking analogy for a reason... I don't see how anyone could deny it personally. I've ripped on cognitive scientists before, and I really don't want to offend you specialspack, but I mean, although, no it's not a fact, neither in a philosophical or even scientific sense, I can't see anyone debating it with any grounding in physiology...
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no offence taken. :D I think the question is whether cognition (or walking) supervenes entirely on the brain (legs) or on some rather vague combination of brain (legs) and world (enviroment). So if the brain causes cognition, is it a sufficent condition for cognition? In the case of walking, we can see that this is not the case - having legs but not using them or being in an enviroment where legs don't touch the ground (in water, in gaseous environment) does not produce walking. Both legs, correct environment and action are needed to produce walking.

Anyhow...

On a dynamical systems model of the brain, the state of euphoria could be regarded as an attractor in the state space. Activation of mu receptors could push the brain's "vector" through the state space towards the euphoria attractor. I think that chimes with what Entlix is saying...
 
have you read "Freedom Evolves" (Daniel Dennett)? This is his thesis - consciousness has evolved in much the same way as other attributes of living things (like legs) -
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I looked at some of his stuff online and that sounds like that might be what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that darwinistic evolution takes place, physically, within the body. This is already known to be true for how the immune systems generates new antibodies in response to new antigens. I'm extending the idea by hypothesising that a similar process takes place inside the brain in regards to cognition, learning, creativity, etc., i.e evolution takes place within our nuerology. (Somehow, we don't know how yet).

Its much better explained and argued here.

but let's bring it back to opiates and euphoria...
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Allright. With me after about 4 days on opiates the euphoria starts to go sour. This is prolly because my situation is unique. While I've never been addicted to opiates, I've dealt with numerous addicitons in the past (mainly meth, coke, etc), long (years) before I ever got around to seriously experimenting with any opiates. So day 4 on opiates is when I think "ok...where am I going with this". The best analogy I could make is like when a guy falls in love with a girl and then get burned by here. Then afterwards his heart is hardened and he has a hard time trusting other girls, especially those who remind him of the girl that burned him. The opiate euhporia reminds me too much of meth euphoria, and I've learned not to trust it. I'm not gonna get screwed by a bitch like that a again. She's great for a one night stand though :)

But the real point here is that there are competing cognitive factors that affect how I feel. There are reasons for me to feel good on opiates, and reasons not to feel good. So there are reasons to do them and reasons not to them. There are competing cognitive factors. What choice will I make?

In many every day sitiutions, my mind is full of competing ideas, feelings and beliefs, and there are processes in my mind for selction of them. When I face an engineering problem, or a personal problem, there are many approaches I can take, so I compare the aproaches and take the one that is best. Thats why I compare cognitive process to evolution. What I'm saying is that evolution takes place within our minds, within our learning and cognition. Survival of the fittest ideas and beliefs. Which are the fittest ideas and beliefs? In a mentally healthy organism the fittest ideas and beliefs would be the one's best for one's survival, i.e. the one's most consistent with environmental factors and healthy decision making.

So basically I would hypothesise the mind is like an complex ecosystem. When you do a drug you alter the balance of the ecosystem, just like legalizing or illegizing deer hunting in a wilderness area will alter the ecological balance of the wilderness area. Or, actually, introduction of a drug into the brain would be more like when humans introduce a toxin into the ecosystem that kills one or two species, or maybe overfeeding of one species, or maybe introduction of a species from one continent into another. Either way you affect the balance of the ecosystem, creating a lot of cascading effects.
 
Gloggawogga --

Very interesting and apropos analogy. the introduction of a drug being analogous to, say, electing a member of a different party to office and rewriting the neuropolitics of that organism.

The consideration of 'survivial' mus go beyond the organism in quesiton,a s that organism is always necessarily a part of a larger organism. So one cannot accurately judge the efficacy of any given set of parameters simply by the survival rate of the organism that implements them.

I happen to believe that information itself is an organism. Language is used as a type of dormant egg, waiting to be fertilized, or reconstituted, by cognition. Language, in the absence of cognition, is just a collection of symbols, most likely completely indistinguishable from any other 'white noise', be it sonic or visual in nature.
 
Slaughterhousefive42 said:
Um...I heard the euphoria was specifically caused by opiates binding to the mu receptors, as opposed to the kappa or theta receptors. It's quite possible the opiate binding causes dopamine release though.
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Where receptors named using the greek alfabet?
 
wow a lot of big words in this thread.
I took the time to read it all and found it very imfomative nonetheless.
 
I just posted a thread in this forum on the neurobiology/psychobiology(which is not my forte) of how the Nucleus Accumbens and the limbic system function in the context of drug dependence. Its not earthshattering stuff but I got 90% for it...
 
Felt that even know this thread is 6 years old, it should still be further discussed. Don't hate me!
 
erosion said:
* The mu is what most opiates bind to, but others will bind to the kappa as well. Not sure about theta.
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Delta you're thinking of, not theta. Salvinorin A is an opioid but it has a huge affinity for kappa receptors and little or no affinity for mu and delta receptors. Drugs like heroin have very little affinity for kappa receptors but high affinity for mu receptors. Theres a salvinorin A analogue called herkinorin which is kinda like a cross between heroin and salvinorin A. God I wanna know what the effects of that drug are like. Its a research chemical I believe. I may be getting kappa and delta receptors mixed up. I know one of the 3 opioid receptors is a weird receptor which salvinorin A binds to. Its either delta or kappa.
 
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