Pleasure rather than salience activates human nucleus accumbens and medial prefrontal cortex
by
Sabatinelli D, Bradley MM, Lang PJ, Costa VD, Versace F.
National Institute of Mental Health Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention,
University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA.
sabat@ufl.edu
J Neurophysiol. 2007 Sep;98(3):1374-9.
ABSTRACTRecent human functional imaging studies have linked the processing of pleasant visual stimuli to activity in mesolimbic reward structures. However, whether the activation is driven specifically by the pleasantness of the stimulus, or by its salience, is unresolved. Here we find in two studies that free viewing of pleasant images of erotic and romantic couples prompts clear, reliable increases in nucleus accumbens (NAc) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) activity, whereas equally arousing (salient) unpleasant images, and neutral pictures, do not. These data suggest that in visual perception, the human NAc and mPFC are specifically reactive to pleasant, rewarding stimuli and are not engaged by unpleasant stimuli, despite high stimulus salience.Dopamine
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The nucleus accumbens
The ventral pallidum and pleasure
Dopamine and dopaminergic antidepressants
Pain, motivation, pleasure and the rostral shell
Depression, dopamine and dextroamphetamine
Mesolimbic medium spiny neurons and pleasure
The magic millimeter? Locating the hedonic hotspot
Hedonic zonal shifts in the medial shell of the nucleus accumbens
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