Taste and smell play a key role in our ability to perceive foods. Overconsumption of highly
palatable energy-dense foods can lead to increased caloric intake and obesity. Thus there is …

Type 2 diabetes and major depressive disorder (MDD) are the leading causes of disability
worldwide and have a high comorbidity rate with fatal outcomes. Despite the long …

The ventral striatum is implicated in the affective processing of reward, which can be divided
into a motivational and a hedonic component. Here, we examined whether these two …

Abstract Background Mu opioid receptors (MORs) are key for reward processing, mostly
studied in dopaminergic pathways. MORs are also expressed in the dorsal raphe nucleus …

Background The mu opioid receptor (MOR) is central to hedonic balance and produces
euphoria by engaging reward circuits. MOR signaling may also influence aversion centers …

Highlights•Food rewards elicit affective responses that emerge from multiple
components.•These components are known to rely on distinct neurobiological …

Anxiety disorders are common and highly distressing mental health conditions. Exposure
therapy is a gold-standard treatment for anxiety disorders. Mechanisms of Pavlovian fear …

Rationale and objectives Fear conditioning is an important aspect in the pathophysiology of
anxiety disorders. The fear-potentiated startle test is based on classical fear conditioning …

Non-human animal studies outline precise mechanisms of central mu-opioid regulation of
pain, stress, affiliation and reward processing. In humans, pharmacological blockade with …

As one of the earliest domains of aesthetics to be studied systematically, there is a sizeable
body of work on the behavioural basis and neural correlates of visual aesthetic appeal …