The positive valence system, adaptive behaviour and the origins of reward

Summary & key facts

The paper explains the "positive valence system" as the brain processes that make things feel rewarding and help animals act in useful ways. It says an ascending arousal system senses bodily changes and turns on central motivational states. Those motivational states become linked with sensory inputs, which supports Pavlovian learning and produces conditioned orienting, preparatory and consummatory responses. The paper describes how affective responses (like arousal, reinforcement and pleasure) shape habits and produce goal or reward values that guide goal-directed action.

Key facts:

• The authors define the positive valence system as the set of processes that create reward-related feelings and support adaptive behaviour.
• An ascending arousal system that is sensitive to peripheral (bodily) regulatory changes is proposed to modulate and activate central motivational states.
• Links between motivational states and sensory inputs underlie evaluative conditioning and form representations of the unconditioned stimuli used in Pavlovian conditioning.
• Pavlovian associations can generate conditioned orienting, consummatory and preparatory responses through motivational control of stimulus-event associations.
• Affective processes such as Pavlovian excitation/inhibition, arousal and reinforcement are described as contributing to habit formation and to generating hedonic (pleasurable) experience that becomes goal or reward values for goal-directed

Abstract

Although the hey-day of motivation as an area of study is long past, the issues with which motivational theorists grappled have not grown less important: i.e. the development of deterministic explanations for the particular tuning of the nervous system to specific changes in the internal and external environment and the organisation of adaptive behavioural responses to those changes. Here, we briefly elaborate these issues in describing the structure and function of the 'positive valence system'. We describe the origins of adaptive behaviour in an ascending arousal system, sensitive to peripheral regulatory changes, that modulates and activates various central motivational states. Associations between these motivational states and sensory inputs underlie evaluative conditioning and generate the representation of the 'unconditioned' stimuli fundamental to Pavlovian conditioning. As a consequence, associations with these stimuli can generate Pavlovian conditioned responses through the motivational control of stimulus event associations with sensory and affective components of the valence system to elicit conditioned orienting, consummatory and preparatory responses, particularly the affective responses reflecting Pavlovian excitation and inhibition, arousal and reinforcement, the latter used to control the formation of habits. These affective processes also provoke emotional responses, allowing the externalisation of positive valence in hedonic experience to generate the goal or reward values that mediate goal-directed action. Together these processes form the positive valence system, ensure the maintenance of adaptive behaviour and, through the association of sensory events and emotional responses through consummatory experience, provide the origins of reward.

Topics

Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies Neural dynamics and brain function Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior

Categories

Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience Life Sciences Neuroscience

Tags

Adaptive behavior Cognition Cognitive psychology Emotional valence Neuroscience Physics Psychology Quantum mechanics Reward system Social psychology Valence (chemistry)