Pleasure, Desire, and Addiction in the Brain with Dr. Kent Berridge

The Center for Applied and Professional Ethics (CAPE) and Department of Psychology are pleased to host Dr. Kent Berridge, James Olds Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Michigan. Dr. Berridge will present Pleasure, Desire, and Addiction in the Brain on Friday, March 28 at 12:55-1:50 PM in Porter Hall 102.

Abstract: Wanting and liking for pleasant rewards usually go together.  But the brain separates wanting and liking mechanisms, creating potential for the two to diverge. Addictive  desires can arise even without expectation of pleasure or actual pleasure when reward is received.  I’ll show a laboratory example as 'wanting for what hurts’, which can also create narrowly focused addictions. Counterintuitively, reward ‘wanting’ may also overlap in mechanisms with forms of fear.  These conclusions have been applied to several clinical conditions, ranging from addictions, to anhedonia, to paranoia.