Surprise! Unexpected Pleasures Are Sweetest
Surprise! Unexpected Pleasures Are Sweetest
April 16, 2001 -- We may think we know what we like, but what our brain really wants is often quite different. As far as the brain's hidden desires are concerned, variety is the spice of life.
"Getting a present on your birthday is not as much fun as getting one on any other day," researcher Gregory S. Berns, MD, PhD, tells WebMD. "The part of the brain that responds to pleasant things does so more when these things are unexpected."
Berns, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, published a paper on how the brain responds to surprise in the April 15 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.
Getting food, water, and sex are powerful drives that motivate human as well as animal behavior. Pleasure centers in the brain respond not only to these natural rewards, but also to addictive drugs.
"There are important parallels in brain activity in response to a broad range of rewards, from food and juice to money," Sheri L. Johnson, PhD, tells WebMD. Johnson, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Miami, was not involved with Berns' study.
To study activity in these pleasure centers, Berns' team and researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, took high-tech brain scans of 25 adults. During the test, the people were hooked up to a device that occasionally squirted small amounts of fruit juice or water in their mouths, either in a completely predictable or totally random pattern.
When reporting their experience to the researchers, all of the study volunteers described both drinks as mildly pleasant, but had a distinct preference for one or the other. They did not report any difference in pleasure when receiving water and fruit juice, whether in the predictable or in the random pattern.
And surprisingly, their brain activity looked the same whether they got their favorite fluid or not. What really seemed to turn on the reward centers in the brain was the unpredictable delivery of the fluid.
"Unpredictable rewards are thought to initiate a teaching signal that instructs the brain when to learn," says Earl K. Miller, PhD, an expert who reviewed the study for WebMD. Animals, including humans, are constantly trying to figure out which events or actions will lead to desired rewards, he explains.
Surprise! Unexpected Pleasures Are Sweetest
April 16, 2001 -- We may think we know what we like, but what our brain really wants is often quite different. As far as the brain's hidden desires are concerned, variety is the spice of life.
"Getting a present on your birthday is not as much fun as getting one on any other day," researcher Gregory S. Berns, MD, PhD, tells WebMD. "The part of the brain that responds to pleasant things does so more when these things are unexpected."
Berns, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, published a paper on how the brain responds to surprise in the April 15 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.
Getting food, water, and sex are powerful drives that motivate human as well as animal behavior. Pleasure centers in the brain respond not only to these natural rewards, but also to addictive drugs.
"There are important parallels in brain activity in response to a broad range of rewards, from food and juice to money," Sheri L. Johnson, PhD, tells WebMD. Johnson, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Miami, was not involved with Berns' study.
To study activity in these pleasure centers, Berns' team and researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, took high-tech brain scans of 25 adults. During the test, the people were hooked up to a device that occasionally squirted small amounts of fruit juice or water in their mouths, either in a completely predictable or totally random pattern.
When reporting their experience to the researchers, all of the study volunteers described both drinks as mildly pleasant, but had a distinct preference for one or the other. They did not report any difference in pleasure when receiving water and fruit juice, whether in the predictable or in the random pattern.
And surprisingly, their brain activity looked the same whether they got their favorite fluid or not. What really seemed to turn on the reward centers in the brain was the unpredictable delivery of the fluid.
"Unpredictable rewards are thought to initiate a teaching signal that instructs the brain when to learn," says Earl K. Miller, PhD, an expert who reviewed the study for WebMD. Animals, including humans, are constantly trying to figure out which events or actions will lead to desired rewards, he explains.