Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-03T20:56:34.327Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Are We Designed to Be Happy?

The Neuroscience of Making Sense of Pleasure

from Part III - Evolution and Neuroscience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2020

By
Eloise Stark ,
Kent C. Berridge  and
Morten L. Kringelbach
Edited by
Lance Workman ,
Will Reader  and
Jerome H. Barkow
Lance Workman
Affiliation:
University of South Wales
Will Reader
Affiliation:
Sheffield Hallam University
Jerome H. Barkow
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia
Get access

Summary

The science of happiness is still in its infancy; there is little consensus on how happiness might be best defined, let alone studied. Still, the pursuit of happiness was inscribed in the American Constitution as a fundamental right, and recently governments around the world have started to measure the happiness and well-being of people as a measure on par with gross national product.

Whatever it is, happiness is clearly desirable, yet worryingly fleeting. In this chapter, we will describe some of the scientific progress that has been made. We will take our lead from Aristotle, who was interested in the good life; a life lived embedded in meaningful values (Aristotle, 350 BC/1976). He divided the main ingredients into hedonia and eudaimonia. The former is perhaps best translated as “pleasure” (derived from hedus, the sweet taste of honey), while eudaimonia is often translated as “well-being,” although it is probably better captured by “flourishing” or “meaningful pleasure.”.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behavior , pp. 91 - 96
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aristotle (350 BCE/1976). The Nicomachean Ethics, Book 10, trans. by Thomson, J. A. K.. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Berridge, K. C. (1996). Food reward: Brain substrates of wanting and liking. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 20, 1–25.Google Scholar
Berridge, K. C. (2000). Measuring hedonic impact in animals and infants: Microstructure of affective taste reactivity patterns. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 24, 173–198.Google Scholar
Berridge, K. C. (2007). Brain reward systems for food incentives and hedonics in normal appetite and eating disorders. In Kirkham, T. C & Cooper, S. J, eds., Appetite and Body Weight. New York: Academic Press, pp. 191–216Google Scholar
Berridge, K. C., & Kringelbach, M. L. (2008). Affective neuroscience of pleasure: Reward in humans and animals. Psychopharmacology, 199, 457–480.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berridge, K. C., & Kringelbach, M. L. (2011). Building a neuroscience of pleasure and well-being. Psychology of Well-Being, 1(1), 1–3.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berridge, K. C., & Kringelbach, M. L. (2015). Pleasure systems in the brain. Neuron, 86, 646–664.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berridge, K. C., & Robinson, T. E. (2003). Parsing reward. Trends in Neurosciences, 26, 507–513.Google Scholar
Biswal, B., Yetkin, F., Haughton, V., & Hyde, J. (1995). Functional connectivity in the motor cortex of resting human brain using echo-planar MRI. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 34, 537–541.Google Scholar
Cabanac, M., & Lafrance, L. (1990). Postingestive alliesthesia: The rat tells the same story. Physiology and Behavior, 47, 539–543.Google Scholar
Cabral, J., Kringelbach, M. L., & Deco, G. (2014). Exploring the network dynamics underlying brain activity during rest. Progress in Neurobiology, 114, 102–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castro, D. C., & Berridge, K. C. (2017). Opioid and orexin hedonic hotspots in rat orbitofrontal cortex and insula. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114, E9125–E9134.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cavanna, A. E., & Trimble, M. R. (2006). The precuneus: A review of its functional anatomy and behavioural correlates. Brain, 129, 564–583.Google Scholar
Crisp, R., & Kringelbach, M. L. (2018). Higher and lower pleasures revisited: Evidence from neuroscience. Neuroethics, 11, 211–215.Google Scholar
Diener, E., Lucas, R. E., & Scollon, C. N. (2006). Beyond the hedonic treadmill: Revising the adaptation theory of well-being. American Psychologist, 61, 305–314.Google Scholar
Drevets, W. C., Price, J. L., Simpson, J. R. Jr., et al. (1997). Subgenual prefrontal cortex abnormalities in mood disorders. Nature, 386, 824–827.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fervaha, G., Graff-Guerrero, A., Zakzanis, K. K., et al. (2013). Incentive motivation deficits in schizophrenia reflect effort computation impairments during cost–benefit decision-making. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 47, 1590–1596.Google Scholar
Frijda, N. (2010). On the nature and function of pleasure. In Kringelbach, M. L. & Berridge, K. C, eds., Pleasures of the Brain. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 99–112.Google Scholar
Gold, J. M., Strauss, G. P., Waltz, J. A., et al. (2013). Negative symptoms of schizophrenia are associated with abnormal effort-cost computations. Biological Psychiatry, 74, 130–136.Google Scholar
Grill, H. J., & Norgren, R. (1978). The taste reactivity test. I. Mimetic responses to gustatory stimuli in neurologically normal rats. Brain Research, 143, 263–279.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gusnard, D. A., & Raichle, M. E. (2001). Searching for a baseline: Functional imaging and the resting human brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2, 685–694.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D. (1999). Objective happiness. In Kahneman, D., Diener, E., & Schwartz, N., eds., Well-being: The Foundation of Hedonic Psychology. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 3–25.Google Scholar
Kaplan, J. M., Roitman, M., & Grill, H. J. (2000). Food deprivation does not potentiate glucose taste reactivity responses of chronic decerebrate rats. Brain Research, 870, 102–108.Google Scholar
Kringelbach, M. L. (2004a). Emotion. In Gregory, R. L, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Mind, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 287–290.Google Scholar
Kringelbach, M. L. (2004b). Learning to change. PLoS Biology, 2, E140.Google Scholar
Kringelbach, M. L. (2005a). The human orbitofrontal cortex: linking reward to hedonic experience. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6, 691–702.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kringelbach, M. L. (2005b). The orbitofrontal cortex: Linking reward to hedonic experience. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6, 691–702.Google Scholar
Kringelbach, M. L. (2009). The Pleasure Center: Trust Your Animal Instincts. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kringelbach, M. L. (2010). The hedonic brain: A functional neuroanatomy of human pleasure. In Kringelbach, M. L. & Berridge, K. C, eds., Pleasures of the Brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 202–221.Google Scholar
Kringelbach, M. L., & Berridge, K. C. (2009). Towards a functional neuroanatomy of pleasure and happiness in the brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13, 479–487.Google Scholar
Kringelbach, M. L., & Berridge, K. C. (2017). The affective core of emotion: linking pleasure, subjective well-being and optimal metastability in the brain. Emotion Review, 9, 191–199.Google Scholar
Kringelbach, M. L., & Rolls, E. T. (2004). The functional neuroanatomy of the human orbitofrontal cortex: Evidence from neuroimaging and neuropsychology. Progress in Neurobiology, 72, 341–372.Google Scholar
Kringelbach, M. L., McIntosh, A. R., Ritter, P., Jirsa, V. K., & Deco, G. (2015). The rediscovery of slowness: Exploring the timing of cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19, 616–628.Google Scholar
Lou, H. C., Kjaer, T. W., Friberg, L., et al. (1999). A 15O–H2O PET study of meditation and the resting state of normal consciousness. Human Brain Mapping, 7, 98–105.3.0.CO;2-M>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McFarland, B. R., & Klein, D. N. (2009). Emotional reactivity in depression: Diminished responsiveness to anticipated reward but not to anticipated punishment or to nonreward or avoidance. Depression and Anxiety, 26, 117–122.Google Scholar
O’Doherty, J., Rolls, E. T., Francis, S., Bowtell, R., & McGlone, F. (2001). Representation of pleasant and aversive taste in the human brain. Journal of Neurophysiology, 85, 1315–1321.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pizzagalli, D. A., Iosifescu, D., Hallett, L. A., Ratner, K. G., & Fava, M. (2008). Reduced hedonic capacity in major depressive disorder: Evidence from a probabilistic reward task. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 43, 76–87.Google Scholar
Rømer Thomsen, K., Whybrow, P. C., & Kringelbach, M. L. (2015). Reconceptualising anhedonia: Novel perspectives on balancing the pleasure networks in the human brain. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 9, 49.Google Scholar
Sato, W., Kochiyama, T., Uono, S., et al. (2015). The structural neural substrate of subjective happiness. Scientific Reports, 5, 16891.Google Scholar
Seligman, M. E., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60, 410–421.Google Scholar
Smith, K. S., Mahler, S. V., Pecina, S., & Berridge, K. C. (2010). Hedonic hotspots: Generating sensory pleasure in the brain. In Kringelbach, M. L & Berridge, K. C, eds., Pleasures of the Brain. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 27–49.Google Scholar
Steiner, J. E. (1973). The gustofacial response: Observation on normal and anencephalic newborn infants. Symposium on Oral Sensation and Perception, 4, 254–278.Google Scholar
Steiner, J. E., Glaser, D., Hawilo, M. E., & Berridge, K. C. (2001). Comparative expression of hedonic impact: Affective reactions to taste by human infants and other primates. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 25, 53–74.Google Scholar
Strauss, G. P., & Gold, J. M. (2012). A new perspective on anhedonia in schizophrenia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 169, 364–373.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Treadway, M. T., Bossaller, N. A., Shelton, R. C., & Zald, D. H. (2012). Effort-based decision-making in major depressive disorder: a translational model of motivational anhedonia. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 121, 553–558.Google Scholar
Waltz, J. A., Frank, M. J., Robinson, B. M., & Gold, J. M. (2007). Selective reinforcement learning deficits in schizophrenia support predictions from computational models of striatal–cortical dysfunction. Biological Psychiatry, 62, 756–764.Google Scholar
Watson, D., & Naragon-Gainey, K. (2010). On the specificity of positive emotional dysfunction in psychopathology: Evidence from the mood and anxiety disorders and schizophrenia/schizotypy. Clinical Psychology Review, 30, 839–848.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Whybrow, P. C. (1998). A Mood Apart: The Thinkers Guide to Emotion and its Disorder. New York: Harper Perennial.Google Scholar
Yang, X. H., Huang, J., Zhu, C. Y., et al. (2014). Motivational deficits in effort-based decision making in individuals with subsyndromal depression, first-episode and remitted depression patients. Psychiatry Research, 220, 874–882.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×