Morten L. Kringelbach

In The Pleasure Center, Morten Kringelbach reveals that what we desire--what pleases us--motivates us for a good reason, and harnessing and directing that reason can make us much more rational and effective people. In exploring the many facets of pleasure, desire, and emotion, Kringelbach takes us through the whole spectrum of human experience. He concludes that if we understand and accept how pleasure and desire arise in the complex interaction between the brain's activity and our own experiences, we can discover what helps us enjoy life, enabling us to make better decisions and, ultimately, lead happier lives.

Trust Your Animal Instincts

The Pleasure Center

Kent C. Berridge

Pleasure is fundamental to well-being and the quality of life, but until recently, was barely explored by science. Current research on pleasure has brought about ground-breaking developments on several fronts, and new data on pleasure and the brain have begun to converge from many disparate fields. The time is ripe to present these important findings in a single volume, and so Morten Kringelbach and Kent Berridge have brought together the leading researchers to provides a comprehensive review of our current scientific understanding of pleasure. The authors present their latest neuroscientific research into pleasure, describing studies on the brain's role in pleasure and reward in animals and humans, including brain mechanisms, neuroimaging data, and psychological analyses, as well as how their findings have been applied to clinical problems, such as depression and other disorders of hedonic well-being. To clarify the differences between their views, the researchers also provide short answers to a set of fundamental questions about pleasure and its relation to the brain. This book is intended to serve as both a starting point for readers new to the field, and as a reference for more experienced graduate students and scientists from fields such as neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, neurology, and neurosurgery.

Pleasures of the Brain

Raymond C. K. Chan

Neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety disorders, and other mental disorders constitute about 13% of the global burden of disease surpassing both cardiovascular disease and cancer. The total cost worldwide of these diseases is estimated to exceed 100 million disability-adjusted life years. In order to begin to address this important problem, the present Research Topic brings together a group of leading affective neuroscience researchers to present their state-of-the-art findings using an affective neuroscience approach to investigate the spectrum of neuropsychiatric disorders from patients to those at risk. They focus on different aspects of the emotional and social cognitive disturbances which are core features of neuropsychiatric disorders. While progress has been slow over last couple of decades, we are finally beginning to glimpse some of the underlying neural mechanisms of the emotional and social cognitive disturbances in patients and those at risk. With the technological advances in affective neuroscience and neuroimaging presented in this volume, we hope that progress will be much swifter in the coming years such that we can provide better care for patients and those at risk.

At Risk for Neuropsychiatric Disorders: An Affective Neuroscience Approach to Understanding the Spectrum

Peter C. Whybrow

Stephanie D. Preston

Brian Knutson

Our drive to consume -- our desire for food, clothing, smart phones, and megahomes -- evolved from our ancestors' drive to survive. But the psychological and neural processes that originally evolved to guide mammals toward resources that are necessary but scarce may mislead us in modern conditions of material abundance. Such phenomena as obesity, financial bubbles, hoarding, and shopping sprees suggest a mismatch between our instinct to consume and our current environment. This volume brings together research from psychology, neuroscience, economics, marketing, animal behavior, and evolution to explore the causes and consequences of consumption. Contributors consider such topics as how animal food-storing informs human consumption; the downside of evolved "fast and frugal" rules for eating; how future discounting and the draw toward immediate rewards influence food consumption, addiction, and our ability to save; overconsumption as social display; and the policy implications of consumption science.Taken together, the chapters make the case for an emerging interdisciplinary science of consumption that reflects commonalities across species, domains, and fields of inquiry. By carefully comparing mechanisms that underlie seemingly disparate outcomes, we can achieve a unified understanding of consumption that could benefit both science and society.

Morten L. Kringelbach

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