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The Reward System Is Functional

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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.

More Is Definitely More

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In April, I abruptly decided to re-start my strength training program. It turned into a series of intentions with a nearly perfect reward structure that includes craving, anticipation, and more-ness, for lack of a better word. I’d like to say it was all on-purpose, but some of it was accidental.

My initial intention was to complete three sessions a week for three weeks, and to get a reward for doing precisely that. If I failed to get three sessions in during any of those weeks, my three week period would start over. I don’t watch much TV, but I recently discovered a show I liked that was cancelled but had 10 seasons on DVD. So I set the season one DVD as my reward. The whole thing was more an experiment than anything else.

Craving

It turned out I really wanted that first DVD! One day when I felt I might be better off not exercising, I considered the possibility of having to start the three weeks over, thus delaying the reward, and decided I wasn’t willing to take that chance. I ended up doing fine, which was informative and gratifying.

I also really like how I feel when I’m doing strength training, and I began to crave that sense of energy and wellbeing, which started paying dividends in other areas.

When I got the first reward, it was more enjoyable than I expected. That’s what’s known technically as a reward prediction error, and it releases even more dopamine.

Anticipation

I look forward to tracking my progress each session, to completing another series of exercises, and to getting closer to my reward. During my second three-week period, I saw that the season two DVD might not be available on the day I completed the 9th session. I could have ordered it then to be “safe,” and put it away until I’d earned it. I have enough willpower to resist. But I realized I would miss out on the anticipation—and that would have felt like a deprivation.

Right now, I’ve finished watching season one and am awaiting the arrival of season two, which I’m really anticipating due to the cliffhanger ending of the last episode!

When you enjoy anticipation, the waiting provides a cascade of feel-good neurochemicals. Of course, while I’m anticipating receipt of the second season, I’ve begun working toward the third.

More

Well, obviously I want all the seasons of this TV show. The best case scenario is that I complete 30 consecutive weeks of three sessions per week, so that’s what I’m aiming for. (Since I recently hit my 1,000th consecutive day of walking, this new intention seems more doable than it might have previously.) I doubt I will become habituated to this reward because there’s always something new going on in the show. Each season is different. Plus I don’t binge-watch the episodes but enjoy one or two at a time.

And there’s more involved in the strength training as I move up to heavier weights and more reps. There’s even more in being able to get (by which I mean righteously justify the purchase of) the next set of weights. And of course, there’s more in continuing to feel better and have more energy.

The Alternate Route

I could watch this show on Netflix, if I still had Netflix, whenever I want to. But that isn’t even remotely appealing to me. By connecting the show with something I want to do and having to wait to enjoy it until I’ve completed the actions, ordered the DVD, and collected it from my mailbox, it has a much bigger impact than it would if all I had to do was turn on the TV. [fyi, I can state this as a fact because I’ve had both experiences, and there’s no contest.] And since I am collecting the DVDs, I’ll not only be able to watch them in the future, I’ll also be reminded of what I achieved in order to earn them. That reinforces the sense of accomplishment and personal agency

Some Unexpected Outcomes

I said I don’t watch much TV, but since undertaking this experiment I don’t watch any TV at all.

The two physical activities I haven’t been able to engage in during the past 5+ years of multiple heart conditions are hiking and dancing. Last year, just before Covid restrictions were put into place, I set up a program to see if I could get myself into shape to hike. But hiking was not in the cards last year, and without that to look forward to, I let the program slide.

Dancing is something I used to do in between sets of strength training exercises, before and after classes, or just spontaneously whenever. Every time I tried it the past few years, I immediately got out of breath, so I stopped trying. But now…I can dance!  And it occurs to me that the dancing might be a better means of getting in shape for hiking than anything else.

I see that I’m getting different rewards for different aspects of this program, which makes it more interesting and compelling to my brain.

Motivation

I actually enjoy strength training, appreciate the increase in vitality and wellbeing I get from it, and understand and value the benefits (mental, physical, and emotional). There are a lot of good reasons to do it. But it’s anticipation of the rewards that increases the likelihood I’ll continue with this program instead of letting other things get in the way.

Dopamine is not just about reward anticipation; it fuels the goal-directed behavior needed to gain that reward; dopamine “binds” the value of a reward to the resulting work. —Robert Sapolsky

And that makes all the difference in the world!

Coming up next: an investigation into learning how to anticipate.

Double Your Pleasure…
by Waiting for It

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The most interesting and frustrating encounters I have with people tend to be based on their reaction to the implications of the brain’s reward system. Regardless of anyone’s individual attitude about it, though, the reward system is a biological fact. So we can either learn how to use it or we can let it use us.

It’s true that some personality types have an easier time with rewards than others. But in addition to that, let’s face it: Homo sapiens is a jaded lot these days. When we can get what we want when we want it—and do so regularly—waiting any amount of time for something can feel painful, like deprivation. We expect, and even require, immediate gratification.

In Behave, the Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst, Stanford’s Robert Sapolsky talks about the conundrum we’re in as a result of having access to stimulation of the brain’s reward circuitry, some of which is “at least a thousandfold higher” than anything previous humans experienced. Sure that includes drugs like fentanyl and cocaine, but it also includes processed sugar, which wasn’t readily available until the 18th Century.

An emptiness comes from this combination of over-the-top non-natural sources of reward and the inevitability of habituation; this is because unnaturally strong explosions of synthetic experience and sensation and pleasure evoke unnaturally strong degrees of habituation. This has two consequences. First, soon we barely notice the fleeting whispers of pleasure caused by leaves in autumn, or by the lingering glance of the right person, or by the promise of reward following a difficult, worthy task [emphasis mine]. And the other consequence is that we eventually habituate to even those artificial deluges of intensity. If we were designed by engineers, as we consumed more, we’d desire less. But our frequent human tragedy is that the more we consume, the hungrier we get. More and faster and stronger.

The Molecule of More

Well, the brain has been referred to as an insatiable wanting machine, and dopamine—the primary agent of the brain’s reward system—isn’t called “the molecule of more” for nothing.

I’ve written and talked a lot about rewards and dopamine already, including the important role of craving in creating desirable habits or pursuing juicy desired outcomes. But it appears there’s a state to be mastered before craving can be put into play. That state is anticipation.

While craving is a powerful desire for something, anticipation is the condition of looking forward to it, especially with eagerness. Without the ability to anticipate, a craving will take you directly and immediately to the object or sensation. You will experience pleasure, but pleasure (aka liking) neurochemicals fade quickly, and then you’re right back to wanting.

For the record, I hate that Carly Simon song, but as long as I can remember I’ve enjoyed anticipation: going to the beach, strawberry shortcake with real whipped cream, the next issue of a particular magazine, a picnic in the backyard, beginning—and finishing—a new piece of writing. When scientists talk about the pleasure evoked by anticipation, I totally get it. As Thomas Hardy wrote in The Return of the Native:

Pleasure not known beforehand is half-wasted; to anticipate it is to double it.

So it surprised me to discover that anticipation can have either neutral or even negative connotations for others. But it’s entirely logical that if you don’t enjoy anticipation, you will probably have a hard time delaying gratification. Sapolsky says that once your brain figures out what it gets rewarded for, dopamine is less about reward than about its anticipation.

The Utility of Anticipation

Temporal discounting suggests that rewards are more attractive when they are imminent as opposed to when they are delayed. But this is not always the case. If you were the recipient of an Easter basket or bag of Halloween candy as a child, did you consume the contents quickly or did you moderate your consumption and delay gratification?

A paper published just last year in Science Advances describes a function called anticipatory utility, which counteracts temporal discounting:

An influential alternative idea in behavioral economics is that people enjoy, or savor, the moments leading up to reward. That is, people experience a positive utility, referred to as the utility of anticipation, which endows with value the time spent waiting for a reward. Anticipatory utility is different from the well-studied expected value of the future reward (i.e., a discounted value of the reward) in standard decision and reinforcement learning theory, where the latter’s utility arises solely from reward and not from its anticipation. Crucially, in the theory of anticipatory utility, the two separate utilities (i.e., anticipation and reward) are added together to construct the total value [emphasis mine]. The added value of anticipatory utility naturally explains why people occasionally prefer to delay reward (e.g., because we can enjoy the anticipation of eating a cake until tomorrow by saving it now), as well as a host of other human behaviors such as information-seeking and addiction.

The paper is a report of cutting-edge research conducted to test how the brain dynamically constructs anticipatory utility. Three different brain regions appear to be involved:

  1. the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), which tracks the value of anticipatory utility
  2. the dopaminergic midbrain (DA), which enhances anticipation
  3. the hippocampus, which mediates the functional coupling of the vmPFC and the DA

Researchers suggest that the vmPFC and DA link reward information to the utility of anticipation, while a strong conceptual tie between the hippocampus, memory, and future imagination supports a suggestion from behavioral economics that the utility of anticipation relates to a vivid imagination of future reward [emphasis mine].

And that brings us smack into the arena of personality and personal operating systems. It explains why I find anticipation to be enjoyable and am therefore able to use future rewards effectively to alter my behavior. It’s not a skill I’ve developed. I’m just wired that way!

Coming up next: (1) my personal example of successfully employing and enjoying anticipation; (2) an investigation into learning how to anticipate.

Do You Want a Resilient Brain?

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The greater your cognitive reserve, the more resilient your brain will be. Brain reserve—or cognitive reserve*—helps your brain adapt and respond to changes and resist damage. It gives it the ability to improvise and find alternate ways of doing a job or performing a task.

Your cognitive reserve begins to develop in childhood and gets stronger as you move through adulthood. If you continue to learn, embrace new activities, and develop new skills and interests, you will continually build and maintain your cognitive reserve.

This is another reason to aim for challenging yourself rather than taking it easy and following the path of least resistance. You don’t know when you’re going to need your cognitive reserve, so it’s good to have as much of it as possible “in the tank.”

Protection from Damage

The concept originated in the 1980s. Researchers discovered that some people who were found at autopsy to have brain changes consistent with advanced Alzheimer’s disease had displayed no apparent symptoms of dementia before they died. These individuals had enough cognitive reserve to offset the damage to their brains to allow them to continue functioning as they always had.

Cognitive reserve can also help stave off degenerative changes associated with other brain diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, or a stroke.

Even if you’re fortunate enough to never experience any of these diseases, you can still benefit from developing cognitive reserve. It can help you function better—and for longer—when you experience unexpected and stressful life events, which tend to require more effort from your brain.

You can’t prevent yourself from aging or insulate yourself from all stressful, unexpected, or life-altering events. You don’t have total control over what kinds of diseases or deficits your genes might predispose you to develop. But you can do something to moderate how much these challenges affect you, your well being, and your ability to function.

Learning, Curiosity, and Dopamine

Even if you don’t develop neurological or psychological disorders, brain circuits that rely on dopamine tend to decline in function with aging. But curiosity prepares your brain for learning by activating the reward system, enhancing memory and motivation in the process. When you’re learning something you’re deeply—as opposed to idly—curious about, you’re more likely to recall and retain what you learn about that topic. You’re also more likely to retain unrelated information you encounter at the same time.

Curiosity may put the brain in a state that allows it to learn and retain any kind of information, like a vortex that sucks in what you are motivated to learn, and also everything around it. —Matthias Gruber, UC Davis Center for Neuroscience

Curiosity, challenge, and complexity seem to define the path that leads to strong cognitive functioning and a more active and enjoyable life now—and to greater cognitive reserve whenever you may need it.

Have your education, work, and leisure activities challenged you over the years? If so, they have contributed to your cognitive reserve. If not, there’s no time like now to reverse course if you want to do as much as you can to maintain your memory and your cognitive skills for as long as you can. Engaging in a variety of activities—physical, mental, and social—with differing levels of complexity have a synergistic effect. So the more things you do in these areas, the better—for both you and your brain.

*“Brain reserve” is sometimes used to refer to physical changes in the brain such as an increase in neurons and synapses (aka the “hardware”). “Cognitive reserve” is sometimes used to refer to the brain’s capabilities and skills in regard to completing tasks, learning new things, or recall (aka the “software”). These distinctions are really two sides of the same coin, and research is currently being conducted on the relationship between them.

What’s New, Pussycat?
Novelty and Your Brain

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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

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