Pleasure & pain, building blocks of emotion
7 important questions on Pleasure & pain, building blocks of emotion
What were early findings on dopamine and their interpretations?
- Blocking dopamine receptors reduces reward-seeking behavior (incl brain self-stimulation)
- Destruction of dopamine pathways abolishes reward-seeking behavior (animals die of starvation)
Interpretation 1: Dopamine itself stimulates the "pleasure center"
Interpretation 2: Dopamine motivates to orient and move to the reward
Interpretation 3: Dopamine enables learning which stimuli are pleasurable
Does dopamine control wanting or liking? And how?
dopamine affects incentive salience of reward:
- Reducing dopamine transmission (eg. Blocking dopamine production, its receptors, or destroying dopamine neurons) reduces effort and approach behavior, but not lip licking
- More dopamine in mutant mice (DAT knockdown)increases wanting but not liking
Dopamine controls wanting, not liking
What are the hedonic hotspots in the (rat) brain? How did they find this
- Increase of liking respons to sucrose
- medial shell of nucleus accumbens - ventral pallidum (destruction turns into disliking)
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Explain how the orbitofrontal cortex is a pleasure center regarding food
Subjective pleasantness and satiety
- subjects did not eat for 6hrs prior to fMRI scanning
- PRE: in scanner, fed with chocolate milk and tomato juice. (roll stimulus around on the tongue, swallow after 10 sec)
- LUNCH: subjects out of scanner eat one liquid of choice until satiety
- POST: in scanner, fed with chocolate milk and tomato juice
Pleasantness ratings: correlation with OFC activity
OFC activity modulated by selective satiety
--> tracks pleasure
Explain how the orbitofrontal cortex is a pleasure center regarding orgasms
- Manual genital stimulation by partner while in the scanner
- rest: resting state
- Fake orgasm: clitoral stimulation and orgasm like movement
- Stimulation: clitoral stimulation without orgasm and movement
- Orgasm: self-reported orgasm induced by clitoral stimulation
- Rectal pressure as objective measure of orgasm
Orbitofrontal rCBF PET: strong decrease for succesful orgasm
(men show similar activity)
What is the golden standard in placebo controlled trials?
What are Tonic and Phasic dopamine systems? And what are they for>
Tonic dopamine: steady-state signal in extracellular space
--> Regulates responsiveness of phasic dopamine system
Phasic dopamine: response to salient environmental stimuli
--> motivation and exploration
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