THE BRAIN FROM TOP TO BOTTOM http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_03/d_03_cr/d_03_...

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THE PLEASURE CENTRES

Pleasure-Seeking
Behaviour For a species to survive, its
members must carry out such
Pleasure and Drugs
vital functions as eating,
Avoiding Pain reproducing, and responding to
aggression. Evolution has
therefore developed certain
areas in our brain whose role
is to provide a pleasurable
sensation as a “reward” for
How Different Parts of the Brain
carrying out these vital
Co-operate functions.

If a sensory stimulus These areas are

does not provide us with interconnected with one
any reward or any
punishment, we quickly another to form what is known
ignore and forget it. This as the “reward circuit”.
phenomenon is called
habituation. It is what
makes us stop being The ventral tegmental area (VTA), a group of neurons at the very centre of the
aware of the feeling of brain, plays an especially important role in this circuit. The VTA receives
clothes against our skin,
or the ticking of the clock information from several other regions that tell it how well various fundamental
on the office wall. needs, and more specifically human needs, are being satisfied.
Since these stimuli are
not associated with The VTA then forwards this information to another structure further forward in
anything positive or
negative, we simply
the brain: the nucleus accumbens. To send this information to the nucleus
ignore them, thus freeing accumbens, the VTA uses a particular chemical messenger: dopamine. The
up our attention for any increase in the level of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, and in other brain
actual rewards or
dangers that may come regions, reinforces the behaviours by which we satisfy our fundamental needs.
our way.

This mechanism lets us

select, out of all the
information that reaches
our senses, the particular
information that is of
value to us as
organisms. Generally,
this is only a tiny
proportion of all the
information that our
senses perceive.

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