Abstract
When exposed to the sights, sounds, smells and/or places that have been associated with rewards, such as food or drugs, some individuals have difficulty resisting the temptation to seek out and consume them. Others have less difficulty restraining themselves. Thus, Pavlovian reward cues may motivate maladaptive patterns of behavior to a greater extent in some individuals than in others. We are just beginning to understand the factors underlying individual differences in the extent to which reward cues acquire powerful motivational properties, and therefore, the ability to act as incentive stimuli. Here we review converging evidence from studies in both human and non-human animals suggesting that a subset of individuals are more "cue reactive", in that certain reward cues are more likely to attract these individuals to them and motivate actions to get them. We suggest that those individuals for whom Pavlovian reward cues become especially powerful incentives may be more vulnerable to impulse control disorders, such as binge eating and addiction.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 1955-1975 |
Number of pages | 21 |
Journal | Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews |
Volume | 37 |
Issue number | 9 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 2013 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The research by the authors reviewed here was supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse grants to B.T.S. ( F31 DA030801 ) and T.E.R. ( R37 DA004294 and P01 DA031656 ). We thank Shelly Flagel and Paul Meyer for helpful comments. We dedicate this manuscript to Ann Kelley, who, in a career cut short by untimely death, contributed many foundational discoveries about the neuroscience of motivated behavior. Her work informs much of our current understanding about brain reward circuitry. All of us who knew her personally (TER) will long remember not only her contributions to science, but as someone who's presence brightened any meeting or symposium she attended, because of her energetic, warm and delightful personality. She was, by any measure, a wonderful colleague and friend.
Keywords
- Accumbens
- Binge eating
- Dopamine
- Goal-tracking
- Human
- Individual differences
- Learning
- Motivation
- Obesity
- Pavlovian
- Rat
- Relapse
- Sign-tracking