Are we addicted to anticipation not reward?

My recent Research Highlight about “dopamine addiction“, raises a few intriguing points about how all addictive behaviour might be to do with the reward mechanism derived from rising dopamine levels in the brain that stimulate various pleasure centres. However, there is another way of looking at it: addiction is not about the reward of dopamine but the anticipation of that reward. US neurologist Robert Sapolsky explains the difference. It’s the uncertainty of the reward that drives behaviour and for humans that reward anticipation can last on the short timescale of slot machines at Las Vegas to the decades long anticipation of heaven’s unearthly estate for many.

Dopamine Jackpot! Sapolsky on the Science of…This is a subtle shift in emphasis. We’re perhaps not addicted to the rewarding feelings of dopamine but to the anticipation of dopamine and thus to anything that sustains dopamine levels through that anticipation whether gambling, drugs, sex, or the pursuit of money, power and the religious endpoint. My original article asked whether dopamine is the most evil chemical in the world. In the light of Sapolsky’s argument, dopamine itself is not the evil chemical, just the possibility of dopamine…we’re not addicted to the chemical, we’re addicted to the possibility of the chemical.

Thanks to ToddStarkfor pointing me to David Dobbs item in Wired displaying the Sapolsky video.

And speaking of anticipation – In the moments before you “stop and smell the roses,” your brain seems to create predictive olfactory templates for specific smells that set up your mental expectations of the scent before the first odour molecules even reach your nostrils – Christina Zelano, Aprajita Mohanty, Jay A. Gottfried. Olfactory Predictive Codes and Stimulus Templates in Piriform Cortex. Neuron, 2011; 72 (1): 178-187 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2011.08.010