American Scientist

May-June 2006

Volume: 94 Number: 3

Continually changing scenes can keep a child (or adult) riveted to a television screen for hours. Why are fast-changing images in a video game or music video so intensely pleasurable? In "Perceptual Pleasure and the Brain," Irving Biederman and Edward A. Vessel propose that the human brain has evolved a craving for information that can be satisfied through continual visual stimulation. Information from the eye speeds along pathways in the brain that are rich in opioid receptors—the same pleasure-modulating molecular receptors that are targeted by opiate drugs—ultimately reaching so-called association areas, where memories are elicited. A phenomenon called competitive learning can explain why our craving for information sends us in search of visual novelty and richly interpretable patterns. Using evidence from brain-imaging studies, Biederman and Vessel suggest that boredom sets in when people are presented inputs at a rate slower than their rate of comprehension. (Photograph by Bill Varie/Corbis.)