Exploring the Mind | Pleasure, Desire, and Addiction in the Brain

How is pleasure (‘liking’) different from desire (‘wanting’), and how are they generated by the brain? Answering those questions is crucial to understanding addiction, compulsivity, and many other aspects of human behavior. Our work at Michigan helped show that the brain’s mesolimbic dopamine system is not a pleasure ‘liking’ mechanism as was once thought, but rather only a motivational ‘wanting’ mechanism. Separate brain opioid hedonic hotspots generate feelings of ‘liking’.

In addiction, drug-induced sensitization of dopamine systems in vulnerable individuals can amplify ‘wanting’ to arguably compulsive levels, even when what is desired does not provide pleasure once obtained. A recent animal laboratory demonstration is ‘wanting what hurts:’ desiring experiences that give no pleasure at all, as a prototype of how addictive compulsion works. Incentive sensitization helps explain how addiction can create a vulnerability to relapse that persists despite sincere desire to quit, even long after drugs are no longer taken.

About the speaker: Kent Berridge is James Olds Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Michigan. Research in Berridge’s lab has aimed for better answers to questions such as: How is pleasure (‘liking’) generated by the brain? How is desire (‘wanting’) generated by the brain? How does wanting something differ from liking it? And how does addiction become compulsive?