The debate over dopamine’s role in reward: the case for incentive salience

2006/10/26 by Kent C. Berridge, Kent Berridge · 2,382 citations
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Addiction #Associative learning #Cognitive psychology #Dopamine #Incentive #Incentive salience #Microeconomics #Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies #Neuroscience #Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior #Psychology #Reward system #Salience (neuroscience) #Stress Responses and Cortisol

paper · doi:10.1007/s00213-006-0578-x

published in Psychopharmacology 191(3), 391-431 (Springer Science+Business Media)

openalex publication_date 2006/10/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02

Citations

• Pleasure: the common currency
• Predictive Reward Signal of Dopamine Neurons

Cited by

• Neuronal Reward and Decision Signals: From Theories to Data
• The Neural Bases of Disgust for Cheese: An fMRI Study
• The Neurobiology of Activational Aspects of Motivation: Exertion of Effort, Effort-Based Decision Making, and the Role of Dopamine
• Cybernetic Big Five Theory
• Dopamine supports reward prediction to shape reward-pursuit strategy
• Realising Active Inference in Variational Message Passing: the Outcome-blind Certainty Seeker
• Phasic dopamine encodes persistent attraction to reward cues
• Questions to Guide the Future of Artificial Intelligence Research
• Differential contributions of striatal dopamine D1 and D2 receptors to component processes of value-based decision making
• Dopaminergic reinforcement in the motor system: Implications for Parkinson's disease and deep brain stimulation
• Prospective Distractor Information Reduces Reward-Related Attentional Capture
• Mental fatigue: Costs and benefits
• How foraging works: Uncertainty magnifies food-seeking motivation
• Striatum-wide dopamine encodes trajectory errors separated from value
• Which aspects of anhedonia predict response to pharmacotherapy in major depressive disorder?
• Dopamine dynamics during stimulus-reward learning in mice can be explained by performance rather than learning
• Cortical and Subcortical Signatures of Incentive Salience Attribution in Tobacco Use Disorder
• Two-Mode Models of Self-Regulation as a Tool for Conceptualizing Effects of the Serotonin System in Normal Behavior and Diverse Disorders
• Metabolic hormones, dopamine circuits, and feeding
• Reinforcement learning in the brain
• Reconsidering anhedonia in depression: Lessons from translational neuroscience
• Individual differences in dopamine-related traits influence mood effects of dopamine D2-antagonist and antidepressant treatment expectations
• Psychology of Habit
• A developmental, mentalization-based approach to the understanding and treatment of borderline personality disorder
• An opportunity cost model of subjective effort and task performance
• Branding the brain: A critical review and outlook
• Emotion dysregulation and reward responsiveness as predictors of autonomic reactivity to an infant cry task among substance‐using pregnant and postpartum women
• A high-resolution fMRI approach to characterize functionally distinct neural pathways within dopaminergic midbrain and nucleus accumbens during reward and salience processing
• Beyond the FRN: Broadening the time-course of EEG and ERP components implicated in reward processing
• Desires and Motivation: The Computational Rule, the Underlying Neural Circuitry, and the Relevant Clinical Disorders
• Optimizing performance through intrinsic motivation and attention for learning: The OPTIMAL theory of motor learning
• Approach-Motivated Positive Affect Reduces Breadth of Attention
• Does Negative Affect Always Narrow and Positive Affect Always Broaden the Mind? Considering the Influence of Motivational Intensity on Cognitive Scope
• Promises and Perils of Experimentation: The Mutual-Internal-Validity Problem
• Elevated reward-related neural activation as a unique biological marker of bipolar disorder: Assessment and treatment implications
• Synaptic plasticity and addiction
• Temperament and arousal systems: A new synthesis of differential psychology and functional neurochemistry
• The ibogaine medical subculture
• Toward a neurobiology of delusions
• Dopamine and adaptive memory
• Affective neuroscience of pleasure: reward in humans and animals
• Mapping anhedonia-specific dysfunction in a transdiagnostic approach: an ALE meta-analysis
• The Mysterious Motivational Functions of Mesolimbic Dopamine
• Ventral tegmental area: cellular heterogeneity, connectivity and behaviour
• Activation of D2 dopamine receptor-expressing neurons in the nucleus accumbens increases motivation
• Activational and effort-related aspects of motivation: neural mechanisms and implications for psychopathology
• Reward processing by the dorsal raphe nucleus: 5-HT and beyond
• Model-based and model-free Pavlovian reward learning: Revaluation, revision, and revelation
• Hyporeactivity of ventral striatum towards incentive stimuli in unmedicated depressed patients normalizes after treatment with escitalopram
• Integrating psychological and neurobiological considerations regarding the development and maintenance of specific Internet-use disorders: An Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution (I-PACE) model
• Tim Crow [wikipedia]
• Affective neuroscience of pleasure: reward in humans and animals. [europepmc]
• Functional grouping and cortical-subcortical interactions in emotion: a meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies. [europepmc]
• Ventral pallidum roles in reward and motivation. [europepmc]
• Striatal plasticity and basal ganglia circuit function. [europepmc]
• Dissecting components of reward: 'liking', 'wanting', and learning. [europepmc]
• 'Liking' and 'wanting' food rewards: brain substrates and roles in eating disorders. [europepmc]
• Adult attachment predicts maternal brain and oxytocin response to infant cues. [europepmc]
• Upward spirals of positive emotions counter downward spirals of negativity: insights from the broaden-and-build theory and affective neuroscience on the treatment of emotion dysfunctions and deficits in psychopathology. [europepmc]
• Predicting value of pain and analgesia: nucleus accumbens response to noxious stimuli changes in the presence of chronic pain. [europepmc]
• Reconsidering anhedonia in depression: lessons from translational neuroscience. [europepmc]
• An integrative and functional framework for the study of animal emotion and mood. [europepmc]
• Effects of early life stress on cognitive and affective function: an integrated review of human literature. [europepmc]
• A selective role for dopamine in stimulus-reward learning. [europepmc]
• Addiction circuitry in the human brain. [europepmc]
• Rethinking the emotional brain. [europepmc]
• From prediction error to incentive salience: mesolimbic computation of reward motivation. [europepmc]
• The mysterious motivational functions of mesolimbic dopamine. [europepmc]
• Synaptic and behavioral profile of multiple glutamatergic inputs to the nucleus accumbens. [europepmc]
• Prolonged dopamine signalling in striatum signals proximity and value of distant rewards. [europepmc]
• An opportunity cost model of subjective effort and task performance. [europepmc]
• Depression, stress, and anhedonia: toward a synthesis and integrated model. [europepmc]
• Reward processing by the lateral habenula in normal and depressive behaviors. [europepmc]
• Noradrenaline and dopamine neurons in the reward/effort trade-off: a direct electrophysiological comparison in behaving monkeys. [europepmc]
• Mesolimbic dopamine signals the value of work. [europepmc]
• Rapid signalling in distinct dopaminergic axons during locomotion and reward. [europepmc]