Advances in the neurobiological bases for food ‘liking’ versus ‘wanting’

Abstract

The neural basis of food sensory pleasure has become an increasingly studied topic in neuroscience and psychology. Progress has been aided by the discovery of localized brain subregions called hedonic hotspots in the early 2000’s, which are able to causally amplify positive affective reactions to palatable tastes (‘liking’) in response to particular neurochemical or neurobiological stimulations. Those hedonic mechanisms are at least partly distinct from larger mesocorticolimbic circuitry that generates the incentive motivation to eat (‘wanting’). In this review, we aim to describe findings on these brain hedonic hotspots, especially in the nucleus accumbens and ventral pallidum, and discuss their role in generating food pleasure and appetite.

IMAGING IN ENDOCRINOLOGY: The use of functional MRI to study the endocrinology of appetite

“…Investigators such as Berridge have separated the neurological and anatomical elements of reward into 'liking' (the intrinsic pleasurable sensation of a stimulus) and 'wanting' (which begins to describe how reward processing influences behaviour) (12). The salience of an object (or image or situation) is how much it stands out or how emotionally arousing it is.…”

Flavours: the pleasure principle

“…Thus, pairing novel odours with glutamate in soup increases liking for those odours, but in addition, exposure to the flavour following conditioning also increased feelings of hunger and increased consumption of the soup, relative to simple repeated exposure to the soup [11]. This suggests a mechanism for the development of food 'wanting' , a distinct construct from 'liking' that has been explored in terms of both distinct neural and motivational substrates [12,13]. Wanting reflects a drive to consume, the effects of which can be observed in eating that is independent of energy needs.…”

Intestinal lipid–derived signals that sense dietary fat

“…This is due, at least in part, to a direct activation of reward centers in the brain. Microdialysis experiments in shamfeeding rats have shown, indeed, that oral presentation of fat triggers the release of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens (60,61), a critical controller of value learning (78)(79)(80)(81)(82). In addition to these central processes, oral fat also deploys multiple regulatory responses in the periphery of the body.…”