ReviewAmerican journal of physiology. Regulatory, integrative and comparative physiology2016
Reassessing wanting and liking in the study of mesolimbic influence on food intake.
Review in American journal of physiology. Regulatory, integrative and comparative physiology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 51 citations in OpenAlex.
- Methylphenidate can help reduce weight, appetite, and food intake-a narrative review of adults' anthropometric changes and feeding behaviors.Frontiers in nutrition · 2024Pooled it
- Trial
- High-fat diet exposure, internal state, and reward value influence decision making during motivational conflict.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- PET/fMRI demonstrates that bariatric surgery may reverse striatal dopaminergic dysfunction in women with obesity.Communications medicine · 2025Article
- Cell-type specific epigenetic and transcriptional mechanisms in substance use disorder.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2025Review
- Temporal dynamics of nucleus accumbens neurons in male mice during reward seeking.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Tackling Cravings in Medical Weight Management: An Update on Pathophysiology and an Integrated Approach to Treatment.Nutrients · 2024Review
- Nucleus Accumbens Shell Neurons Encode the Kinematics of Reward Approach Locomotion.Neuroscience · 2023Article
- Modulatory Effect of Gut Microbiota on the Gut-Brain, Gut-Bone Axes, and the Impact of Cannabinoids.Metabolites · 2022Review
- The Arousal-motor Hypothesis of Dopamine Function: Evidence that Dopamine Facilitates Reward Seeking in Part by Maintaining Arousal.Neuroscience · 2022Article
- Stimuli predicting high-calorie reward increase dopamine release and drive approach to food in the absence of homeostatic need.Nutritional neuroscience · 2022Article
- The Ventral Tegmental Area to Accumbens GABAergic Projection: Promoting Prediction or Engineering Extinction?Biological psychiatry · 2021Article
- The Nucleus Accumbens Core Is Necessary for Responding to Incentive But Not Instructive Stimuli.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2020Article
- Overexpression of corticotropin-releasing factor in the nucleus accumbens enhances the reinforcing effects of nicotine in intact female versus male and ovariectomized female rats.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2020Article
- Mode of Sucrose Delivery Alters Reward-Related Phasic Dopamine Signals in Nucleus Accumbens.ACS chemical neuroscience · 2019Article
- The Psychopharmacology of Effort-Related Decision Making: Dopamine, Adenosine, and Insights into the Neurochemistry of Motivation.Pharmacological reviews · 2018Review
- Dopamine and Proximity in Motivation and Cognitive Control.Current opinion in behavioral sciences · 2018Article
- Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies.Journal of systems and integrative neuroscience · 2018Article
- Article
- Inhibiting Mesolimbic Dopamine Neurons Reduces the Initiation and Maintenance of Instrumental Responding.Neuroscience · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Humans and animals such as rats and mice tend to overconsume calorie-dense foods, a phenomenon that likely contributes to obesity. One often-advanced explanation for why we preferentially consume sweet and fatty foods is that they are more "rewarding" than low-calorie foods. "Reward" has been subdivided into three interdependent psychological processes: hedonia (liking a food), reinforcement (formation of associations among stimuli, actions, and/or the food), and motivation (wanting the food). Research into these processes has focused on the mesolimbic system, which comprises both dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area and neurons in their major projection target, the nucleus accumbens. The mesolimbic system and closely connected structures are commonly referred to as the brain's "reward circuit." Implicit in this title is the assumption that "rewarding" experiences are generally the result of activity in this circuit. In this review, I argue that food intake and the preference for calorie-dense foods can be explained without reference to subjective emotions. Furthermore, the contribution of mesolimbic dopamine to food intake and preference may not be a general one of promoting or coordinating behaviors that result in the most reward or caloric intake but may instead be limited to the facilitation of a specific form of neural computation that results in conditioned approach behavior. Studies on the neural mechanisms of caloric intake regulation must address how sensory information about calorie intake affects not just the mesolimbic system but also many other forms of computation that govern other types of food-seeking and food-oriented behaviors.
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Registered trials
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.