These emerging insights into brain pleasure mechanisms may eventually facilitate better treatments for affective disorders. In contrast, some of the best known textbook candidates for pleasure generators, including classic pleasure electrodes and the mesolimbic dopamine system, may not generate pleasure after all. Those hotspots also can be embedded in broader anatomical patterns of valence organization, such as in a keyboard pattern of nucleus accumbens generators for desire versus dread. Liking, or pleasure itself, is generated by a smaller set of hedonic hotspots within limbic circuitry. Wanting for rewards is generated by a large and distributed brain system. Human neuroimaging studies indicate that surprisingly similar circuitry is activated by quite diverse pleasures, suggesting a common neural currency shared by all. In affective disorders anhedonia (lack of pleasure) or dysphoria (negative affect) can result from breakdowns of that hedonic system. Pleasure is mediated by well-developed mesocorticolimbic circuitry, and serves adaptive functions.
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