ArticleCurrent biology : CB2013
Instant transformation of learned repulsion into motivational "wanting".
Article in Current biology : CB, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 115 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
115 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 321 citations in OpenAlex.
- How childhood adversity affects components of decision making.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2025Pooled it
- Behavioral and Neural Evidence of the Rewarding Value of Exercise Behaviors: A Systematic Review.Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2018Pooled it
- The Brain Basis of Positive and Negative Affect: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis of the Human Neuroimaging Literature.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2016Pooled it
- Rapidly decreasing phasic dopamine responses precede a hedonic switch during satiation of sodium appetite.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Model-Free and Model-Based Learning in Human Fear Conditioning.Psychophysiology · 2026Article
- Engagement of the Paraventricular Nucleus of the Thalamus During Withdrawal-Related Learning: Implications for Alcohol Use Disorder.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- Motivation, attention, and uncertainty: insights from animal and human research and implications for addiction.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- The case for value as a common currency in decision-making and intersystem competition.Frontiers in cognition · 2026Article
- Phasic dopamine encodes persistent attraction to reward cues.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Timescales of dopamine release in the striatum as a window into hierarchical control.Current opinion in behavioral sciences · 2025Article
- 20 Years of Aberrant Salience in Psychosis: What Have We Learned?The American journal of psychiatry · 2025Review
- What's the occasion? Phasic dopamine signaling and interoception.Current opinion in neurobiology · 2025Review
- Behavioral microanalyses refine sign-tracking characterization and uncover different response dynamics during omission and extinction learning.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Contextual cues facilitate dynamic value encoding in the mesolimbic dopamine system.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- Reward Bases: A simple mechanism for adaptive acquisition of multiple reward types.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Control of sodium appetite by hindbrain aldosterone-sensitive neurons.Molecular and cellular endocrinology · 2024Review
- Encoding of Predictive Associations in Human Prefrontal and Medial Temporal Neurons During Pavlovian Appetitive Conditioning.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Neural substrates of parallel devaluation-sensitive and devaluation-insensitive Pavlovian learning in humans.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Prefrontal Dopamine in Flexible Adaptation to Environmental Changes: A Game for Two Players.Biomedicines · 2023Review
- Contexts facilitate dynamic value encoding in the mesolimbic dopamine system.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
55 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Abstract
backgroundLearned cues for pleasant reward often elicit desire, which, in addicts, may become compulsive. According to the dominant view in addiction neuroscience and reinforcement modeling, such desires are the simple products of learning, coming from a past association with reward outcome.
resultsWe demonstrate that cravings are more than merely the products of accumulated pleasure memories-even a repulsive learned cue for unpleasantness can become suddenly desired via the activation of mesocorticolimbic circuitry. Rats learned repulsion toward a Pavlovian cue (a briefly-inserted metal lever) that always predicted an unpleasant Dead Sea saltiness sensation. Yet, upon first reencounter in a novel sodium-depletion state to promote mesocorticolimbic reactivity (reflected by elevated Fos activation in ventral tegmentum, nucleus accumbens, ventral pallidum, and the orbitofrontal prefrontal cortex), the learned cue was instantly transformed into an attractive and powerful motivational magnet. Rats jumped and gnawed on the suddenly attractive Pavlovian lever cue, despite never having tasted intense saltiness as anything other than disgusting.
conclusionsInstant desire transformation of a learned cue contradicts views that Pavlovian desires are essentially based on previously learned values (e.g., prediction error or temporal difference models). Instead desire is recomputed at reencounter by integrating Pavlovian information with the current brain/physiological state. This powerful brain transformation reverses strong learned revulsion into avid attraction. When applied to addiction, related mesocorticolimbic transformations (e.g., drugs or neural sensitization) of cues for already-pleasant drug experiences could create even more intense cravings. This cue/state transformation helps define what it means to say that addiction hijacks brain limbic circuits of natural reward.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.