[ed. See also: The Neurological Pleasures of Fast Fashion]
The reward system exists to ensure we seek out what we need. If having sex, eating nutritious food or being smiled at brings us pleasure, we will strive to obtain more of these stimuli and go on to procreate, grow bigger and find strength in numbers. Only it’s not as simple in the modern world, where people can also watch porn, camp out in the street for the latest iPhone or binge on KitKats, and become addicted, indebted or overweight. As Aristotle once wrote: “It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.” Buddhists, meanwhile, have endeavoured for 2,500 years to overcome the suffering caused by our propensity for longing. Now, it seems, Berridge has found the neuro-anatomical basis for this facet of the human condition—that we are hardwired to be insatiable wanting machines.
If you had opened a textbook on brain rewards in the late 1980s, it would have told you that the dopamine and opioids that swished and flickered around the reward pathway were the blissful brain chemicals responsible for pleasure. The reward system was about pleasure and somehow learning what yields it, and little more. So when Berridge, a dedicated young scientist who was more David than Goliath, stumbled upon evidence in 1986 that dopamine did not produce pleasure, but in fact desire, he kept quiet. It wasn’t until the early 1990s, after rigorous research, that he felt bold enough to go public with his new thesis. The reward system, he then asserted, has two distinct elements: wanting and liking (or desire and pleasure). While dopamine makes us want, the liking part comes from opioids and also endocannabinoids (a version of marijuana produced in the brain), which paint a “gloss of pleasure”, as Berridge puts it, on good experiences. For years, his thesis was contested, and only now is it gaining mainstream acceptance. Meanwhile, Berridge has marched on, unearthing more and more detail about what makes us tick. His most telling discovery was that, whereas the dopamine/wanting system is vast and powerful, the pleasure circuit is anatomically tiny, has a far more fragile structure and is harder to trigger.
Before his lecture, we meet for coffee; there’s another Starbucks in the convention centre. I’m surprised to find that someone so practised at public speaking has pre-performance jitters. Shortly after arriving, Berridge turns white and bolts from the queue to retrieve the laptop with his presentation on, which he has accidentally left in his hotel lobby. Nor is he immune to the desires and pleasures he studies. Without hesitating, he orders a “grande” chestnut praline latte and slice of coffee cake. “It’s easy to turn on intense wanting,” he says, when we eventually sit down. “Massive, robust systems do it. They can come on with the pleasure, they can come on without the pleasure, they don’t care. It’s tricky to turn on the pleasure.” He hadn’t expected his findings to turn out this way, but it made sense. “This may explain”, he later tells his audience, “why life’s intense pleasures are less frequent and less sustained than intense desires.”
In recent years, Berridge’s doubters have steadily dispersed, and reams of research have been applying the disparity between liking and wanting (or pleasure and desire, enjoyment and motivation) to the clinical study of conditions such as depression, addiction, binge eating, obsessive-compulsive disorder and Parkinson’s disease. It is also increasingly present in psychological and philosophical discussions about free will, relationships and consumerism. (...)
Although desire and pleasure often go hand in hand, it is perfectly possible to want something without liking it. Think of the crazy impulse purchases that are more about the frisson of shopping than the product itself. The cake that disgusts you, but you eat it anyway. The drugs you crave, even though they’re no fun any more. And as for that ex-lover...
The reward system exists to ensure we seek out what we need. If having sex, eating nutritious food or being smiled at brings us pleasure, we will strive to obtain more of these stimuli and go on to procreate, grow bigger and find strength in numbers. Only it’s not as simple in the modern world, where people can also watch porn, camp out in the street for the latest iPhone or binge on KitKats, and become addicted, indebted or overweight. As Aristotle once wrote: “It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.” Buddhists, meanwhile, have endeavoured for 2,500 years to overcome the suffering caused by our propensity for longing. Now, it seems, Berridge has found the neuro-anatomical basis for this facet of the human condition—that we are hardwired to be insatiable wanting machines.If you had opened a textbook on brain rewards in the late 1980s, it would have told you that the dopamine and opioids that swished and flickered around the reward pathway were the blissful brain chemicals responsible for pleasure. The reward system was about pleasure and somehow learning what yields it, and little more. So when Berridge, a dedicated young scientist who was more David than Goliath, stumbled upon evidence in 1986 that dopamine did not produce pleasure, but in fact desire, he kept quiet. It wasn’t until the early 1990s, after rigorous research, that he felt bold enough to go public with his new thesis. The reward system, he then asserted, has two distinct elements: wanting and liking (or desire and pleasure). While dopamine makes us want, the liking part comes from opioids and also endocannabinoids (a version of marijuana produced in the brain), which paint a “gloss of pleasure”, as Berridge puts it, on good experiences. For years, his thesis was contested, and only now is it gaining mainstream acceptance. Meanwhile, Berridge has marched on, unearthing more and more detail about what makes us tick. His most telling discovery was that, whereas the dopamine/wanting system is vast and powerful, the pleasure circuit is anatomically tiny, has a far more fragile structure and is harder to trigger.
Before his lecture, we meet for coffee; there’s another Starbucks in the convention centre. I’m surprised to find that someone so practised at public speaking has pre-performance jitters. Shortly after arriving, Berridge turns white and bolts from the queue to retrieve the laptop with his presentation on, which he has accidentally left in his hotel lobby. Nor is he immune to the desires and pleasures he studies. Without hesitating, he orders a “grande” chestnut praline latte and slice of coffee cake. “It’s easy to turn on intense wanting,” he says, when we eventually sit down. “Massive, robust systems do it. They can come on with the pleasure, they can come on without the pleasure, they don’t care. It’s tricky to turn on the pleasure.” He hadn’t expected his findings to turn out this way, but it made sense. “This may explain”, he later tells his audience, “why life’s intense pleasures are less frequent and less sustained than intense desires.”
In recent years, Berridge’s doubters have steadily dispersed, and reams of research have been applying the disparity between liking and wanting (or pleasure and desire, enjoyment and motivation) to the clinical study of conditions such as depression, addiction, binge eating, obsessive-compulsive disorder and Parkinson’s disease. It is also increasingly present in psychological and philosophical discussions about free will, relationships and consumerism. (...)
Although desire and pleasure often go hand in hand, it is perfectly possible to want something without liking it. Think of the crazy impulse purchases that are more about the frisson of shopping than the product itself. The cake that disgusts you, but you eat it anyway. The drugs you crave, even though they’re no fun any more. And as for that ex-lover...
by Amy Fleming, More Intelligent Life | Read more:
Image: Brett Ryder
