Reward

Reward involves the value and motivational importance attached to an outcome. In addiction, pleasure, wanting and learning can become partly separated, helping explain why a substance may remain powerfully attractive even when it is no longer enjoyed as much.

Reward is not simply another word for pleasure.

Something can be pleasurable, strongly wanted, learned about or repeatedly pursued, and those processes are related without being identical.

Addiction makes those differences particularly important.

A person may once have used a substance because they enjoyed its effects. Later, they may find themselves strongly drawn towards it by cues, expectations or learned motivation even when the pleasure has diminished.

Researchers often describe this distinction as “liking” versus “wanting.”

Liking refers to the pleasurable impact of a reward.

Wanting refers to its motivational pull.

Strong wanting does not necessarily mean strong liking, and it does not prove that a person's reflective wish to stop using is insincere.

Reward is therefore not one simple brain signal or a burst of a single chemical.

It emerges from interacting processes that help determine what attracts attention, what feels valuable and what seems worth pursuing.

Full access is needed to read this Topic's articles.