It is becoming clearer how neurobiological mechanisms generate 'liking'and
'wanting'components of food reward. Mesocorticolimbic mechanisms that enhance …

How do brain systems evaluate the affective valence of a stimulus—that is, its quality of
being good or bad? One possibility is that a neural subsystem, or 'module'(such as a …

Drugs of abuse induce persistent remodeling of reward circuit function, a process thought to
underlie the emergence of drug craving and relapse to drug use. However, how circuit …

The nucleus accumbens (NAc) contains multiple subpopulations of medium spiny neurons
(MSNs). One subpopulation expresses D1-type dopamine receptors, another expresses D2 …

The central nucleus of amygdala (CeA) mediates positively-valenced reward motivation as
well as negatively-valenced fear. Optogenetic or neurochemical stimulation of CeA circuitry …

Background Corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) neural systems are important stress
mechanisms in the central amygdala (CeA), bed nucleus of stria terminalis (BNST), nucleus …

Highlights•'Wanting'(incentive salience) & 'liking'(hedonic impact) are components of
reward.•Dopamine contributes to 'wanting'but not 'liking.'•Hypoactivity in dopamine-related …

Highlights•'Liking'and 'wanting'are important components of positive affect.•Neural hyper-
reactivity of 'wanting'brain systems can lead to addiction via incentive-sensitization and …

Individuals typically want what they expect to like, often based on memories of previous
positive experiences. However, in some situations desire can decouple completely from …

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a chronic and fatal disease. The main impediment of the AUD
therapy is a high probability of relapse to alcohol abuse even after prolonged abstinence …