what's the technical name for pleasure receptors

[gib65]

If nociceptors are the name given to pain receptors, what's the name given to pleasure receptors?

[Glider]

There really aren't such things as specific pleasure receptors. The experience of pleasure results from the subjective evaluation of a stimulus, not from stimulation of specific receptors. This is why stimuli that are considered pleasurable differs from person to person.

 

Actually, there aren't such things as specific nociceptors either. This is a term often used to describe the free nerve endings associated with primary afferent fibres (C and A-Delta), but generally only in the study of nociception.

 

Whilst these fibres do respond to noxious stimuli, they are not specific to them. For example, C fibres are polymodal and primarily signal changes in temperature, although they also respond to 'noxious' heat and cold (e.g. >52*C & <7*C).

[abciximab]

^ what he said

 

in addition, it might be beneficial to know that dopamine is elevated in the brains of people experiencing pleasure, so dopamine receptors in the nucleus accumbens (pleasure center) of your brain could be classified as "pleasure receptors". Not all dopamine receptors are for pleasure though (they are also on the kidney and heart and other parts of the brain, and these have completely different functions.)