Are There Medications That Can Reduce or Shut Down the Reward Centre of the Brain?

Question by : Are there medications that can reduce or shut down the reward centre of the brain?
I know that drug addiction is centred in the pleasure centre of the brain and I am wondering if there is any way to reduce suppress or stop the over activity in that part of the brain.

Best answer:

Answer by Lys
Hmmmmm….it’s not so much a pleasure center as it has to do with chemicals being produced that make the body feel good. For example, serotonin is a feel-good hormone that your body produces. There is a thing called serotonin re-uptake inhibitors…. it’s typically what people who are depressed have a problem with. The serotonin is produced but not circulated properly. I would assume they have some things that could do that. Though with the high that drug addiction produced not. That’s why it’s so difficult. And what you speak of – the reward center of the brain – it’s based on an inherent understanding of what we know is coming. We even have a galvanic stimulated response to prove our pleasure center is working correctly. For example in a scenario where cards are shown to people in epeating order and every time an ace is shown the person gets rewarded a pile of money, the person will start showing these pleasure sings BEFORE the next ace is drawn, as they know it’s coming. In very few people this phenomenon does not happen, and they have no anticipation before hand. They may know it’s coming but there’s pleasure doesn’t kick in. Vice-versa unfortunately it’ works the same way with bad things: they don’t feel any sort of “Uh OH!” feeling if they know something bad is about to happen. They can feel things once they occur, but not prior to the occurrance. The result is essentially people who we know as anti-social personality disordered people: serial killer types. There is little forewarning to stop them from doing bad things before they do them, and little reason to make make them feel good with enticement, so….bad things happen. The moral of the story. if the do have stuff to play with this brain centre I doubt they use it often.

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