The hedonic hotspots that generate pleasure ‘liking’ are each about a cubic millimeter in size (in rats perhaps a cubic centimeter in you), and contained in limbic forebrain structures such as the nucleus accumbens, the ventral pallidum, and limbic regions of prefrontal cortex.
Understanding how the brain truly causes pleasure has important implications for unraveling how hedonic dysfunctions cause mood disorders, drug addiction and related clinical disorders [General review papers on pleasure ‘liking’: ( PDF) ( PDF) This is all the more important because several other brain candidates once thought to mediate pleasure turn out to not cause pleasure after all on closer inspection (e.g., dopamine, electrical brain stimulation).
This helps to identify true mechanisms of pleasure in the brain. Our lab has discovered brain generators of sensory pleasure as a system of anatomical ‘hedonic hotspots’ in the brain, which can paint intense pleasure on sensation. Sweetness or other natural pleasures are mere sensations as they enter the brain, and brain systems must actively paint the pleasure onto sensation to generate a ‘liking’ reaction - as a sort of pleasure gloss or varnish.
Hedonic hotspots of ‘Liking’ - The brain’s pleasure gloss
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