Brain's Reward System Archives

Pleasure Is Transient
but Wanting Persists

July 16, 2024 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Liking is the pleasure you experience from something. The source of that pleasure is the liking—or Here and Now—neurochemicals released in your brain: serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins and other endogenous opioids, and endocannabinoids. The same pleasure-generating areas in the brain are activated for all pleasures, from gustatory and sensual to musical, artistic, and altruistic.

Life’s intense pleasures are less frequent and less sustained than intense desires. —Dr. Kent Berridge, University of Michigan

Because the pleasure circuit is considerably smaller and far more fragile than the “wanting system,” it can be elusive; more importantly, it is always transient. Liking something doesn’t always motivate you to go after it. Dopamine is what generates motivation, so you also need to want what you like.

We often think of desire and the objects of our desire as inseparable. We think it is the indulgence itself—the luscious ice cream, the rush of nicotine, or the flood of coins from a slot machine—that motivates us. To a greater extent, however, it is the expectation of these rewards, the luxurious anticipation of them, that fires up our brains and compels us to dig in, take a drag, or place another bet. —Chris Berdik, Mind over Mind

While liking (pleasure) and wanting (desire) are separate systems, wanting actually enhances and, in a sense, prolongs liking. It’s said that the brain likes to want because it releases liking neurochemicals along with dopamine. On the other hand, instant gratification quickly dissipates pleasure. That’s how you end up on the hedonic treadmill where you are continually in pursuit of more and more of the things or experiences that initially brought you pleasure in an attempt to maintain a steady state of pleasant feelings.

When you work toward a reward and earn it, rather than simply treating yourself to it because you can, you actually enhance your enjoyment of it. But you have to be intentional about it. You have to make a connection between your actions and the reward so your brain gets the message.

Dopamine is a powerful motivator. It carries signals for both rewards and for the muscle movements needed to go out and get them. So when dopamine levels are diminished, you will still like what you like, but you will be less inclined to take action to get it. And when dopamine levels are elevated, you will be more inclined to take action to get something, whether or not you actually like it.

Liking and wanting usually do work together in your brain, but when they become uncoupled, you can want something without liking it. And according to Stanford University researchers, if you don’t get something you want, you desire it more while liking it less.

If you don’t clearly identify what you want—and determine how you’re going to get it—you’re liable to end up going along for the ride of getting what your brain wants. What you want needs to be compelling enough to you to activate the amygdala, thus creating a sense of urgency. Amygdala activation is critical in getting you to act on your desires. It settles down when you receive or achieve them.

In the case of long-term goals, once you’ve identified a reward and begin taking steps toward it, your brain gradually and steadily releases increasing bursts of dopamine the closer you get to the reward. And the bigger the reward (the more your brain craves it), the more dopamine will be released.

Reward systems integrate liking, wanting, and learning. Our pleasures help us learn and change our behavior, and what we learn alters the pleasure we experience. Our reward system has a built-in flexibility in which cognitive and pleasure systems interact and modulate each other. Anything can be a source of pleasure as long as it taps into reward systems embedded in our brains. –Anjan Chaterjee, author of The Aesthetic Brain

Wanting has a purpose. It is critical to any focused effort. It motivates you to pursue both long-term and short-term goals. But, as Chris Berdick says, once that goal’s been achieved, wanting moves along.

Unsurprisingly, liking neurochemicals have a close relationship with stress neurochemicals—adrenaline, norepinephrine, cortisol, etc.—which I also call disliking neurochemicals. I’ll talk about how that relationship can hamper our ability to create change next time.

This post is part of a series on neurotransmitters that both affect our behavior and are affected by our behavior.

Everything Everywhere
Is in Motion All the Time

June 19, 2024 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

What would we do without dopamine? The answer is: nothing. We can’t do anything without dopamine, which is the literal source of all motivation—all movement—whether physical or psychological. Why then are so many people going on and on about how we all need a dopamine detox? Why are we advised to be wary of substances or activities that provide us with “hits” of dopamine, as if dopamine were a drug?

Considering popular, and even some scientific, perspectives on dopamine tends to put me in mind of the lyrics of a song by the Animals straight out of the wayback machine:

I’m just a soul whose intentions are good.
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.

While dopamine’s functions* are wide and varied, its role in regard to the brain’s reward system has been clarified. Dopamine is not the source of pleasure in the brain. That role is played by the liking neurochemicals, such as serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins, endocannabinoids, and endogenous opioids. Dopamine is called the “wanting” neurochemical because it is the source of…wanting, which is really just another word for motivation.

Dopamine is released when the brain expects to experience a reward, meaning it expects to experience something it likes. It causes us to take action by moving toward the reward.

Let’s say you notice you’re thirsty and you consider getting up from your desk to get a glass or bottle of water. Do you want the water enough to stop what you’re doing and take an action to get it? In other words, how motivated are you? How enticing is the water? How rewarding do you think it will be? How much pleasure do you think you’ll get from it? (Of course, it’s your brain that makes the choice, but you get to experience both the wanting and the liking.)

Although dopamine is not one of the liking neurochemicals, the brain “likes” to want. It likes to be motivated, to get us to move. So liking neurochemicals are released along with dopamine, to a greater or lesser extent depending on how rewarding the brain expects the experience or substance to be. The so-called wanting system in the brain is considered to be robust, while the liking system is fragile. That’s because the liking neurochemicals don’t stick around for long, so the brain moves on to wanting something else. Liking comes and goes but wanting persists.

Those who believe we should not want simply don’t understand how the brain works. Wanting is essential for being awake and for living an awake life, as was illustrated in the 1990 movie Awakenings. Robin Williams played neurologist Oliver Sacks, who in the early stage of his career dosed catatonic patients with levodopa, the precursor to dopamine in an attempt to literally wake them from their unresponsive states.

Going on a dopamine detox (conceptually, anyway, since the idea is nonsensical), would be like deciding to stop eating altogether in order to avoid sugar. It would be like advising someone not to pursue something they’re passionate about because that would generate “too much” dopamine.

Although dopamine plays a role in compulsive or addictive behavior, it is neither a drug, nor does it function like a drug. Instead of trying to manage dopamine—which is not a game for amateurs—we ought to focus on identifying better targets. We could learn how to use the wanting system to pursue the things we think would provide us with a more satisfying and meaningful life.

Next time I’ll talk about two important dopamine pathways in the brain and how they affect our ability to create change.

*Dopamine plays a role in your brain’s reward system, which includes feeling pleasure, achieving heightened arousal, and learning. Dopamine also helps with focus, concentration, attention, memory, sleep, mood, and motivation. And it is involved with decision-making, movement, working memory, and learning. It is one of the most extensively studied neurochemicals, mainly because it plays such diverse roles in human behavior and cognition. Dopamine is also a factor in Parkinson’s disease, addiction, schizophrenia, and other neuropsychiatric disorders.

This post is part of a series on neurotransmitters that both affect our behavior and are affected by our behavior.

The Reward System Is Functional

February 27, 2024 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Yes, the reward system is functional, which means that it isn’t conceptual or fanciful—or optional. It’s integral to our survival, and it’s even older than we are: it evolved in worms and flies about a billion years ago. It doesn’t care what your or my opinion about rewards is. Having an opinion about the reward system is like having an opinion about whether or not your car should need gas. No matter how deeply committed to your opinion you are, unless you have a battery operated car, it needs gas. If you fail to put gas in the car, it won’t operate. If you fail to utilize your brain’s reward system, on the other hand, it will operate you. It fulfills a non-optional function that’s essential to survival.

One thing that gets in the way of using rewards intentionally and effectively is the mistaken belief that things like rewarding experiences, benefits, or celebrations are the same thing as rewards. They are not.

Rewarding Experiences Are Not Rewards

You undoubtedly have experiences and engage in activities that feel rewarding to you. All that means is that you enjoy them, which is really neither good nor bad. Some of the experiences or activities people enjoy or find rewarding are the very ones they want to eliminate or change. And the reason these behaviors are difficult to eliminate or change is because they are rewarding (smartphone scrolling, eating unhealthy food, binge watching, buying things, snorting cocaine…).

So it’s extremely important to recognize that rewards and rewarding experiences, while related, are not the same thing. They both elicit “liking” neurochemicals in the brain at the time they are experienced. And some rewarding experiences also involve dopamine, the “wanting” neurochemical. In fact it’s the dopamine, rather than the liking neurochemicals that makes altering some existing behaviors so difficult. This is an example of the reward system operating you.

Rewards utilize dopamine intentionally. Dopamine can help develop creative tension, which increases the motivation to take a specific action or series of actions that you want to take in order to get the anticipated reward. It’s a carrot…if carrots motivate you, that is. I can take or leave carrots, but the opportunity to add new music to my digital playlist always motivates me. Dopamine also puts your brain on notice that this particular action or series of actions is important and it should pay attention.

Experiencing an unmediated rewarding activity is passive. Identifying and using a reward to reinforce behavior change is active.

Rewarding: providing satisfaction or gratification; enjoyment
Reward: an act performed to strengthen approved behavior; reinforcement

You can use rewarding experiences as rewards, but they are not rewards in and of themselves.

Neither Are Benefits

A benefit is something that is advantageous or good. Benefits can be short-term or long-term. They result from actions you take. (Of course, you can also benefit from actions other people take or from fortunate changes in circumstances, but you have no direct control over those things.)

If there were no benefit to you for embarking on a particular course of action (completing a project or goal action plan, changing or starting a habit, or following through on an intention), there would be no point in doing it. Benefits answer the question of why you want to do something. So it’s useful to clearly identify all the benefits that would—or could—accrue if you accomplish what you set out to do.

It seems logical, doesn’t it, that understanding the benefit or beneficial nature of a particular action somehow ought to magically translate into the taking of that action? And yet this isn’t how the brain works. The brain’s reward system is functional, not logical. Benefits are not interpreted by your brain as rewards just because they are good for you. And understanding what benefits may accrue doesn’t have any direct impact on your behavior. Knowing that ordering from the salad side of the lunch menu instead of from the burger side is better for your cholesterol level and maybe your overall health will not make ordering a salad happen. Nor will it turn a salad into a reward or even a rewarding experience.

But you could use a reward to motivate you to order that salad if good health or some aspect of it is a long-term desired outcome.

Celebrations Aren’t Rewards, Either

In behavior-change terms, a celebration is an impromptu acknowledgement, after the fact, of something you’ve accomplished. The difference between a reward and a celebration is in how you use it, not what it is. In order for something to be effective as a reward, you need to crave it. That’s because dopamine is triggered by the expectation of a reward. So in order for you—and your brain—to crave a reward, the reward needs to be (1) something you really enjoy and (2) identified ahead of time.

Celebrations are great! Go ahead and celebrate your successes and accomplishments. But don’t try to substitute celebrations for rewards because they will not help you train your brain to do what you want it to do, which is the point of a reward. If you have trouble identifying suitable rewards, pay attention to how you celebrate and the treats you give yourself. You may be able to use some of those things as rewards.

The Bottom Line

Rewarding experiences and celebrations are enjoyable, and benefits are…beneficial (good for you). But, unlike rewards, they do not serve the function of motivating you to create behavior change. Because the reward system operates at the unconscious level, you can’t simply dismiss it or try to circumvent it. The best course of action is to take advantage of it and work with it. Otherwise, you may unwittingly develop and reinforce behaviors you don’t want. No one sets out to develop undesirable behaviors or habits on purpose. And yet each of us has trained our brain, often unwittingly but via the same process, to engage in every one of the behaviors and habits we now have, both the ones we like and want to keep and the ones we don’t like and want to change or eliminate.

I’m beginning a six-month experiment called Contrivance of the Month. This experiment includes using my newsletter, lucidwaking, to feature an article on the relevant contrivance in one issue and links to worksheets, instructions, and additional information in another issue. The March contrivance, as you may already know or have guessed, is rewards. If you want to play along, you can check out the 2/20/24 issue on the Newsletter page on my website, where you can also subscribe to lucidwaking to keep up with the contrivance content. The next issue with all the links and other good stuff will be published tomorrow, 2/28/24.

What’s New, Pussycat?
Novelty and Your Brain

May 2, 2018 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Are you curious and adventurous, constantly looking for new sensations and experiences? Do you tend to get bored easily? Are you quick to lose your temper? Extravagant or impulsive? Do you make decisions before you have all the information? Take risks? Enjoy being in the middle of chaos or disorder? Maybe a bit of an adrenaline junkie?

If you answer yes to most of those questions, you’re probably a neophiliac, but don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of the term (which has nothing to do with dead people, by the way). Neophiliacs are people who not only enjoy novelty, they actively seek it out—sometimes going to extremes to experience it.

Is That a Good Thing or a Bad Thing?

Early research into the novelty-seeking personality trait found it to be associated with conditions like attention deficit disorder and antisocial behaviors such as alcoholism, drug abuse, compulsive spending, and various other risky, unsafe, and illegal activities. So from that perspective, novelty-seeking is definitely not good.

But more recent research suggests that novelty-seeking actually keeps people healthy and happy and may even be the quintessential human survival skill* that helps us adapt to and cope with changes of all kinds and degrees. So now novelty-seeking is viewed in a much more positive light.

But trying to classify novelty-seeking as either good or bad doesn’t make a lot of sense. Since its reputation has improved, many people who should know better have been advising us to make a point of including more novelty in our lives by, for example, taking a different route to work. If your life is so lacking in novelty that taking a different route to work is the only way you can get it, you may have bigger problems to worry about.

Does Your Brain Like Novelty?

The fact that your brain responds to novelty doesn’t necessarily mean it likes it. Your brain pays attention to new things because it has to figure out what they are, whether they’re potentially pleasurable or harmful, and what you need to do about them. Novelty wakes up your brain’s reward system, which is involved in learning and memory, and the amygdala, which processes emotional information.

So you become more alert, aware, and emotionally aroused. Because dopamine has been activated, you are motivated to explore the situation in search of a reward. But the purpose of this amped up state is not to make you feel good; it’s to ensure your survival. It uses making you feel good to help you remember what you did and what you learned.

Is It Actually Novelty You’re Seeking?

The real question is: Do you tend to seek novelty for its own sake or is what you’re seeking providing you with novelty?

There’s a purpose for your brain’s response to novelty. When you encounter it in the course of doing or learning something new, undertaking a challenge, or accomplishing a goal, what you experience has relevance to your life. So focusing your attention on it and remembering it is meaningful.

Simulated or vicarious novelty may be pleasurable and emotionally arousing in the moment, but it’s superficial—a replica of the real thing.

If you’re up to something, you’re bound to encounter plenty of novelty along your path. And when you do, it will enhance your cognition and your experience, it will increase your well-being, and it will motivate you to do and be and want and contribute more. That’s one of the best aspects of being human. And that is good!

*Winifred Gallagher, New: Understanding Our Need for Novelty and Change

R Is for Rewards

March 1, 2017 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Your brain enjoys rewards so much that it actually has a whole system devoted to them. The neurotransmitter dopamine—sometimes referred to as the pleasure chemical—is part of the reward system. It’s released both when you experience a reward and when you expect to experience one. As the release of dopamine fills you with feelings of pleasure, your brain associates those feelings with whatever you just did or ingested. It’s called associative conditioning.

That association is the basis of the brain’s reward system, the purpose of which is to ensure your survival by helping you learn and remember the behaviors and substances that are good for you. Many different substances, activities, and behaviors trigger the release of dopamine. Some of them, in addition to food and sex, are:

social interactions
music
generosity
scary movies, scary situations, or scary thoughts
psychoactive drugs (alcohol, cocaine, heroin, nicotine, etc.)
gambling
sugar

Your Brain Runs on Rewards

For the most part, your brain’s reward system functions automatically without your conscious intervention. You probably don’t pay a lot of attention to it other than being aware that some things are a lot more pleasurable than others, and of course you want to engage in the behaviors or ingest the substances that are pleasurable.

While you may have no problem thinking of some experiences as rewarding, you might be ambivalent—or worse—about using rewards intentionally to help you modify your own behavior. As a being with a prefrontal cortex, you may think you aren’t susceptible to rewards the way your puppy is. Or you might be under the impression you shouldn’t need to use rewards. You should just be able to make up your mind to do something and then do it.

Maybe you think you don’t—or shouldn’t—need to reward yourself for doing what you want to do or what’s in your own best interest. Maybe you believe knowing what you want to do, why you want to do it, and how to do it is sufficient. You’re an adult. You have self-discipline and self-control. Or you can develop it. Rewards might be OK for young children. Or pets. But you don’t need them.

If that’s where you’re coming from, well, science does not support your position. It turns out all of us are hardwired to be “insatiable wanting machines.” If you don’t learn how to use the brain’s reward system, it will continue having its way with you.

Let’s say you want to begin a new habit. If there are no rewards, or weak rewards, habits are much less likely to take hold. That’s because the basal ganglia, which is the part of the brain that turns repetitive behaviors into habits, depends on having enough dopamine to operate efficiently.

I hand out pages of stickers to the clients in my Goals, Habits & Intentions course. Some people love them and immediately figure out how to use them as rewards. Others hold onto them for weeks, wondering what to do with them. (“Why do I have these?”) Some have no problem connecting awarding themselves a sticker with getting a reward. Others go through the motions without making that connection.

A reward is positive reinforcement. It motivates you to repeat the behavior. In the case of long-term goals, small hits of dopamine encourage you to keep moving forward, so it pays to know where you are headed. And it works better to acknowledge and celebrate each small accomplishment along the way (often a sticker will do) than to wait for one big jolt of dopamine at the end (an entire spa day).

Benefits Are Not Rewards

If there were no benefit to you for embarking on a particular course of action, there would be no point in doing it. Benefits answer the question of why you want to do something. So it’s useful to clearly identify all the benefits that would—or could—accrue if you accomplish what you set out to do. But you identify benefits via the conscious part of your brain, and rewards are processed by the unconscious.

Celebrations Are Not Rewards

In behavior-change terms, a celebration is an impromptu acknowledgement of something you’ve accomplished. The difference between a reward and a celebration is in how you use it, not what it is. In order for something to be effective as a reward, you need to crave it. That’s because dopamine is triggered by the expectation of a reward. So in order for you—and your brain—to crave a reward:

The reward needs to be something you really want (enjoy).
The reward needs to be identified ahead of time: what exactly will you get when you complete or accomplish the thing you set out to do?
You also need to follow through and actually give yourself the reward. (You might not think this needs to be stated, but it does.)

Using Rewards = Using Your Brain

You may believe that accomplishment should be its own reward, but your brain doesn’t see it that way—and it’s the way your brain sees it, not the way you do, that matters. Sure some activities and accomplishments are intrinsically rewarding, but that’s not the case for all activities. Rewards help your brain help you accomplish the things you set out to do and turn desirable behaviors into habits.

Because your brain’s reward system operates with or without your participation, you can develop habits you don’t want to have that may be extremely difficult to change or stop. And while the conscious part of the brain is certainly better at many things than the unconscious part of the brain is, the reverse is also true. When it comes to modifying behavior, the smartest thing the conscious part of the brain can do is recognize the value of the reward system—and learn how to use it effectively.

Part of the series A-Z: An Alphabet of Change.