B O S T O N, April 16 -- Why do those little unexpected pleasures in life mean so much? Apparently the brain's pleasure centers are more "turned on" when we experience unpredictable pleasant things, ...

We humans enjoy many things—especially eating. (And occasionally marijuana.) Yet sometimes, our relationship with food becomes quite distorted. A recent study investigated the interaction between our ...

The Natural High Two key brain chemicals regulate how happy the body feels. Dopamine, which is released in the nucleus accumbens and the frontal cortex, bathes neurons involved in memory and emotion, ...

According to new research from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, stress promotes immune cell interactions with the brain to control social behavior through a circulating myeloid ...

Researchers discover that the phosphorylation of a newly identified protein kinase substrate downstream of the dopamine signaling pathway regulates the brain reward behavior. The nucleus accumbens, ...