Psych-Out

A lion smells a zebra. A songbird hears a sweet-to-his-ears response in some distant tree. You eye your neighbor’s new car. It’s that moment before the chase when the brain’s pleasure centers become awash in it’s favorite neurotransmitter – dopamine.

Our greatest pleasure seems to come in that moment before chasing that meal, mate, or brand new car. That’s when the burst of our natural pleasure chemical peaks. The reward itself? From the standpoint of dopamine, it’s little more than an afterthought.

Capture is sweet. Anticipation is sweeter, still. It’s a time-honored evolutionary strategy wired deep inside our nervous systems. When our pleasures were scarce, and the dangers were many, it was a strategy that helped us do the things we needed to do to survive. The state of anticipation revs up that much needed internal imperative to seek, to chase, to get up and make it happen – lions, tigers, and bears be damned! It’s what we call motivation.

The psychological term for this moment is the “appetitive stage.” It’s the time when expectation is tweaked and our appetite is whetted. When that burst of dopamine is released, pleasure surges so we actually get up and do the work to obtain what it is we need. The big cat perks its ears, lifts its nose to the wind. He’s gearing up to make his move.

Anticipation starts in our senses. A sight. A sound. A smell. It gets its boost at the cingulate gyrus. This ridge of cerebral cortex receives information from the eyes, ears, and nose. It then sends a message to the basal ganglia, which guides movement, and to the brainstem that stimulates our states of arousal. For we humans, this neuro-electro-chemical chain reaction can also start from a mere thought, fantasy, or idea. If the information is the right kind, we get an urge.

The nucleus accumbens is a closely connected brain area critical to our experience of pleasure and reward. It’s proximity to the brain’s motor system (the striatum) and the limbic system make it a critical intersect between emotion and action. We feel want. We anticipate reward. Pleasure starts to surge. Weight is given to whatever object we’re geared to seek, and thence it tugs and pulls at our attention. This nifty little system determines what’s worth pursuing. It’s a system that keeps us seeking. Keeps us working for that reward. (1)

You want to really light up pleasure’s Christmas tree? Add uncertainty to whether or not you’ll snag that zebra, mate, or brand new car. It’s why intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful of motivators. Will I get it, or will I not? Does he love me, or does he not? If you think you have a good chance, but you’re not sure, anticipation tops out in an exquisite burst of pleasure. Odds are it will be hard to stop yourself from doing something to get that answer, or seek that reward.

Beware that tweak of disappointment after the reward is seized. It may not be because the object desired is less desirable, but the contrasting withdrawal of dopamine between anticipation and capture. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Carly Simon, Anticipation

_____________________________________

(1) There’s increasing evidence that many addicts, especially cocaine addicts, develop a deficit in their pleasure-reward system. Some drugs wreak havoc on the dopamine receptors in the nucleaus accumbens. Often, such addicts experience low levels of motivation and very little of the internal reward buzz that keeps most of us engaged in those smaller, yet necessary, life moments.