Reward-seeking and threat avoidance are critical for survival. Pursuing enjoyable things triggers the release of dopamine in the brain, making people feel pleasure. In contrast, people subconsciously ...

The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is an area of the brain known to play a key role in regulating a variety of reward-related behaviors, including appetitive and aversive responses, feeding, social ...

Neuroscientists have discovered that the degree of motivation and the stamina to keep it up depends on the ratio between the neurotransmitters glutamine and glutamate in the nucleus accumbens of the ...

Two views of the brain with the nucleus accumbens, a hub of the brain's reward circuitry, highlighted in green. This region was more active when teenagers saw that their own photographs, and those of ...

Researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism have found that anticipation of increasing monetary rewards selectively activates the human nucleus accumbens of the ventral ...