[nicb]

The question is: when I understand something, I feel a distinct sense of pleasure. When something seems rubbish to me, or I simply don't understand, the feeling is completely reversed (displeasure). I think this is a pattern common to all humans. A good example I have at hand is music appreciation: you like contemporary music (or contemporary art, for that matter) only if you _learn_ to listen to it - that is, only if you learn what are the regularities to look for and what are the exceptions to look for. But I think many other examples can be made. Curiosity has to do with pleasure, evidently.

So, why is there pleasure connected to understanding? Is this the sign of a
possible connection between "the old brain" and the neocortex? This would make sense from an evolutionary point of view: if our species would stop to learn, we would disappear very quickly - so there must be some internal rewarding mechanism in learning. On the other hand, there are some cases in which there is pleasure connected to _not_learning_ - when we don't want to know about something, or we listen to very repetitive music (yes, what about mantras?).

I wonder if you have some comments or answers on this question, or if you can redirect me to some references about it.