Sex, drugs and rock and roll: all humour the same part of your brain

So why do we talk so much about video games? Because doctors now believe you can overwork and burn out your fun factory. Too many video games and you just can’t get enough and it becomes harder and harder to find enjoyment.

Anybody remember the Woody Allen movie Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask?

In that movie, from 1972, Woody tells us some of his freaky ideas about having fun.

The next year Woody made a movie called Sleeper. In that movie he introduces us to the machine called the “Orgasmatron”. It is some kind of sexually stimulating phone booth. You go in looking fine and you come out with your hair and clothes all mess up, a huge grin on your face, and you want a drink and a smoke …

I think some of these video games kids are playing are the closest thing we’ve ever produced that is like the “orgasmatron”. But video games are a form of recreation self amusement like masturbation and doctors really believe if you do it too much you can fry some electrons in the fun factory.

So all things in moderation!

Some squirm at the notion that drug experiences are on the same level of “true” religious experiences. If manifestations of religious or spiritual experiences are simply the result of firing synapses in the brain, it would severely undercut the idea of an objective existence of “God”.

Dr Andrew Newberg, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has pioneered neuroimaging techniques of both believers and non-believers alike.

He found certain areas in the temporal lobe were excited during prayer or meditation: this is where the brain rates the significance of events which are then strongly internalised.

I’m not fond of Frederick Niche, but it appears that there is some literal truth in his statement that religion is the “opiate of the masses”. Some words and ideas borrowed from our friends here.