‘Wanting’ and ‘Liking’ Are Different to Your Brain
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 964 Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2021
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about why just because you want something doesn’t mean you like it; why Esperanto is the world’s most successful universal language; and a gene therapy injection in one eye that improved vision in both.
Just because you want something doesn't mean you like it — and that has implications for addiction by Kelsey Donk
- Edmonds, D. (2020, December 12). The science of addiction: Do you always like the things you want? BBC News.. https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-55221825
- Berridge, K. C., & Robinson, T. E. (2016). Liking, wanting, and the incentive-sensitization theory of addiction. American Psychologist, 71(8), 670–679. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000059
Esperanto Is the World's Universal Language by Reuben Westmaas
- Some Basic Information about Esperanto -- the International Language. (2021). Esperanto.org. http://esperanto.org/us/USEJ/world/index.html
- Berlin, R. L. G. (2013, September 26). Johnson: Simple, logical and doomed. The Economist; The Economist. https://www.economist.com/prospero/2013/09/26/johnson-simple-logical-and-doomed
- L.L. Zamenhof | Polish linguist and physician | Britannica. (2021). In Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/L-L-Zamenhof
Gene therapy injection in one eye surprises scientists by improving vision in both by Cameron Duke
- Almeroth-Williams, T. (2020, December 10). Gene therapy injection in one eye surprises scientists by improving vision in both. University of Cambridge. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/gene-therapy-injection-in-one-eye-surprises-scientists-by-improving-vision-in-both
- Yu-Wai-Man, P., Newman, N. J., Carelli, V., Moster, M. L., Biousse, V., Sadun, A. A., Klopstock, T., Vignal-Clermont, C., Sergott, R. C., Rudolph, G., Morgia, C. L., Karanjia, R., Taiel, M., Blouin, L., Burguière, P., Smits, G., Chevalier, C., Masonson, H., Salermo, Y., … Sahel, J.-A. (2020). Bilateral visual improvement with unilateral gene therapy injection for Leber hereditary optic neuropathy. Science Translational Medicine, 12(573). https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.aaz7423
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com. |
| 0:05.9 | I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. |
| 0:08.0 | Today you learn about why just because you want something doesn't mean you like it. |
| 0:12.0 | The story of Esperanto, the world's |
| 0:14.1 | most popular universal language, and how a gene therapy injection in one eye |
| 0:18.8 | improved vision in both. Let's satisfy some curiosity. This is going to sound counterintuitive, but just |
| 0:26.0 | because you want something doesn't mean you like it. It's true and it has big implications for |
| 0:31.8 | addiction. |
| 0:33.0 | Until very recently, scientists and the general public assumed that if a person wanted something, it must be because they like it. |
| 0:41.0 | But now scientists are starting to doubt the truth behind that assumption, and they're also starting to doubt another assumption. |
| 0:48.0 | That is, that dopamine is the hormone that drives both wanting and liking. |
| 0:54.8 | This idea was first proposed as a sort of thrown together solution |
| 0:59.1 | to some confusing study results in the 1990s. |
| 1:03.0 | Researcher Kent Barrage noticed that when he removed dopamine from rats brains, |
| 1:08.0 | they stopped looking for their favorite sugary foods. |
| 1:11.0 | That made it seem like dopamine is what made them like sugar, but when he actually gave |
| 1:16.9 | them sugar, the rats without dopamine still seemed to like the sugary foods. |
| 1:23.2 | They even made the same pleasurable facial expressions |
| 1:26.0 | they would normally. |
| 1:27.6 | So then Barrage did the opposite. |
| 1:29.6 | He increased the dopamine in the rats' brains. The rats ate four times as much sugar when that happened, but they didn't seem to like it any more than they had before. |
| 1:40.0 | So something was off. Thus, Barrage developed a hypothesis. Maybe wanting and |
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