Special thanks to blythespirit for making me think in this direction, but...frustratingly I couldn't find anything regarding the "giver"/sadist.


These are extracts from the ScienceForums.net thread titled BDSM and biochemistry


On this thread we have argued about the steps who can produce this pleasant sensation when the pain and humiliation are produced in certain situations from certain people to certain other people. For example the action of the endorphins could be stronger in masochist people (perhaps they have excess of certain receptors for these neurotransmitters); dopamine could act more in pleasure areas than in pain areas in submissive people…


Sex hormones like estrogen, and genes appear to play a big part in how individuals' bodies, and emotions, react to pain.

In fact, their newest preliminary data suggest that variations in women's estrogen levels -- like those that occur throughout the monthly menstrual cycle, or during pregnancy -- regulate the brain's natural ability to suppress pain.

When estrogen levels are high, the brain's natural painkiller system responds more potently when a painful experience occurs, releasing chemicals called endorphins or enkephalins that dampen the pain signals received by the brain. But when estrogen is low, the same system doesn't typically control pain nearly as effectively.

Pain has both physical and emotional components. If prolonged, it also becomes a stressor that influences our emotional states, and the interplay of gender, hormones, genetics and brain neurochemistry appears to induce our individual response to it.

When pain or other sources of stress become significant and threatening, groups of cells in the brain release chemicals called endogenous opioid chemicals, commonly known as endorphins or enkephalins. The endorphins bind to receptors on nearby brain cells and regulate how the brain interprets and regulates the pain-related signals those cells are sending to one another. The effect is called antinociception, because the neurotransmitters typically suppress the pain response, as opposed to nociception, which is the actual perception of pain.

Mu-opioid receptors are found throughout the brain, but are concentrated in areas that scientists know to be involved in our physical and emotional responses to stressors, including pain. Natural endorphins aren't the only thing that can bind to them; so can painkiller medications such as morphine, some anesthetics, and illegal drugs such as heroin. No matter what's binding to the receptors, the effect is a quelling of pain and our response to it.



I think that this tendency to BDSM it’s produced by the interneuron connexions that are formed during the very first years of life. And I am specially interested in the interaction of the feelings with the perception of the pain and humiliation. Because submissive and masochist people like being humiliated or produced pain by people that are attracted to, but we hate the same that other people having a toothache or being humiliated at work.


One area about which I am curious is the potential difference between enjoying physical pain versus enjoying psychological pain. Do those who like cutting themseleves also get some strange satisfaction out of grief or feelings of loss?


Well, in many respects, yes it is (hard-wired into your brain). Everything is. All experience alters our neurophysiology, including what activates our pleasure centers and what we crave. While it's all built on the substrate or foundation with which we were born, and is limited to our biology, the structure itself is generally a result of experience. It's not "hard" wired, per se, since new connections are continually formed and old connections continually trimmed, but it's definitely "wired" in a plastic sense.

Also, it's more than just the brain. It's the entire nervous system and many subsystems each playing their little part, like a single instrument helping contribute to the overall performance of a beautiful symphony.


Although our neural connexions are constantly changing because that is the way how learning and memory processes work, this are only little changes if we compare them with the high number of connexions in the brain. So, most of the connexions are already formed at three years old. When a baby has just born, any stimulus will produce big changes in synaptic connexions, but when we are adults we need very powerful stimuli to produce any notorious change.


There are people more submissive that get their pleasure mainly because the dominant get pleasure. The submissive is happy being humiliated by a dominant person who likes humiliating the first one, but that doesn’t mind that the submissive person like to be humiliated for anyone. When the dominant part produces physic pain on the submissive part, the submissive part gets pleasure because this pain made him/her feel subdued to the dominant one.

The masochist person obtains directly his/her pleasure through the pain. But I don’t know about any masochist person that gets pleasure when he hurts himself by accident and I don’t think that there are pure masochists or submissive persons. I think that each submissive person has more or less or masochist and vice verse.
When the painful stimulus is produced, first, the substance P prompts the physical sensation of pain, but the production of endorphins calm this physical sensation and even can produce a pleasant sensation. I suppose that a masochist produces great amounts of endorphins against the painful stimulus and so, pleasure can get not realizing of pain. The amount of pain for the threshold not being gone beyond would be different in each person.

But only in certain situations this pain is pleasurable: Feelings have to be implicated in order pleasure overcomes pain. The production of endorphin prompts the release of dopamine. Although dopamine is a “pleasure hormone”, main artist in the reward pathways, some works seem to indicate that it could be the cause of the psychological displeasing feeling of the pain.
D1 receptors seem to produce the displeasuring effect, while D2 would produce pleasure. So, my idea is that submissive people are prone to drive this dopamine to an area where there will be most of D2 receptors instead the area where the pain routes arrive with most of D1 in them. And this detour would be prompted by the nervous stimulation produced by the feelings. Perhaps submissive people have “pleasure areas” with D2 very near “displeasure areas” with D1, and that lead to “confusion”.


Extract from a paper about the capsaicin, the causing for the chilli peppers being spicy, which activate a pain pathway, causing in that way pleasure.

“So what is this addiction that chili eaters have with eating spicy food. If capsaicin initially induces powerful discharges of substance P in the pain pathway (and later reduces our sensitivity to pain), so much that many people hate to eat spicy food, then how is it that so many of us cannot eat without it in our foods? This is due to the fine line between pain and pleasure. When there is an increased concentration of B-endorphins (an opioid agonist), this stimulates the dopaminergic system to release more dopamine, which activates the reward circuit. This reward circuit is also known as the limbic system area, which runs in the brain from the ventral tegmentum, to the nucleus acumbens”