'Wanting' - Incentive salience:
How does reward 'wanting' relate to reward 'liking'?
A common brain myth is that dopamine
mediates sensory pleasure, but our research helps indicate that dopamine
mediates only a form of ''wanting' called incentive salience,
and not pleasure 'liking'. Our goal is to better understand the psychological
nature of incentive salience and to clarify its brain mesolimbic mechanisms
('Wanting'
overview 1 PDF; 'Wanting'
overview 2 PDF; 'Wanting'
research sample PDF).
Affective valence
in limbic microcircuits:
What determines if something is nice or nasty? What does desire share
in common with dread? We are examining brain maps of affective valence
(positive versus negative emotion) in the nucleus accumbens. Our work
has found rostrocaudal gradients of ‘liking’ and ‘disliking’ in
accumbens shell. We are also examining the role of accumbens microcircuits
that serve as building blocks of motivational salience that the brain
can construct into either desire or dread. This may have important implications
for understanding ordinary positive and negative affective reactions
in normal people, and for some pathological affective reactions in schizophrenia
and other clinical disorders (Valence
research sample 1 PDF; Valence
research sample 2 PDF).
Addiction:
Why is drug addiction so compulsive and long lasting? The distinction of 'wanting' from 'liking' has important implications found in the Incentive-Sensitization theory of addiction PDF. Addictive drugs can cause permanent neural sensitization in brain mesolimbic systems of incentive salience. Sensitized incentive salience means addicts have compulsive 'wanting' to take drugs, which can last months or years. Much neuroscience evidence has emerged to favor this theory in the 10 years since it was first proposed. We stress Incentive-Sensitization theory does not provide a cure for addiction, but it does help pinpoint a crucial aspect of what goes wrong. That understanding may eventually aid design of a more adequate cure. Basic affective neuroscience research on ‘wanting’ and ‘liking’ in our lab aims to better understand underlying mechanisms, which we hope will have direct implications for understanding addiction (Incentive sensitization research sample PDF; Addiction overview 1 PDF; Addiction overview 2 PDF).
Other Human Applications:
Incentive salience ÅewantingÅf mechanisms have implications for other forms of human irrational desire (Irrational overview PDF). We are also exploring how basic 'liking' / 'wanting' systems may relate to conscious and unconscious emotion processes in normal people (Unconscious overview PDF; see also P. Winkielman).
