Motivational salience
Template:Short description Template:See also Template:Use dmy dates Motivational salience is a cognitive process and a form of attention that motivates or propels an individual's behavior towards or away from a particular object, perceived event or outcome.<ref name="Motivational salience">Template:Cite journal</ref> Motivational salience regulates the intensity of behaviors that facilitate the attainment of a particular goal, the amount of time and energy that an individual is willing to expend to attain a particular goal, and the amount of risk that an individual is willing to accept while working to attain a particular goal.<ref name="Motivational salience" />
Motivational salience is composed of two component processes that are defined by their attractive or aversive effects on an individual's behavior relative to a particular stimulus: incentive salience and aversive salience.<ref name="Motivational salience" /> Incentive salience is the attractive form of motivational salience that causes approach behavior, and is associated with operant reinforcement, desirable outcomes, and pleasurable stimuli.<ref name="NAcc function" /><ref name=Schultz/> Aversive salience (sometimes known as fearful salience<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>) is the aversive form of motivational salience that causes avoidance behavior, and is associated with operant punishment, undesirable outcomes, and unpleasant stimuli.<ref name="Aversive salience">Template:Cite book</ref>
Incentive salience
Template:Addiction glossary Incentive salience is a cognitive process that grants a "desire" or "want" attribute, which includes a motivational component to a rewarding stimulus.<ref name="Motivational salience" /><ref name="NAcc function" /><ref name=Schultz /><ref name="Incentive salience and motivation review" /> Reward is the attractive and motivational property of a stimulus that induces appetitive behavior – also known as approach behavior – and consummatory behavior.<ref name=Schultz>Template:Cite journal</ref> The "wanting" of incentive salience differs from "liking" in the sense that liking is the pleasure that is immediately gained from the acquisition or consumption of a rewarding stimulus;<ref name="Incentive salience and motivation review" /><ref name="Pleasure system - incentive sensitization" /> the "wanting" of incentive salience serves a "motivational magnet" quality of a rewarding stimulus that makes it a desirable and attractive goal, transforming it from a mere sensory experience into something that commands attention, induces approach, and causes it to be sought out.<ref name="Incentive salience and motivation review">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Pleasure system - incentive sensitization" />
Incentive salience is regulated by a number of brain structures, but it is assigned to stimuli by a region of the ventral striatum known as the nucleus accumbens shell.<ref name="Motivational salience" /><ref name="NAcc function">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Incentive salience and motivation review" /> Incentive salience is primarily regulated by dopamine neurotransmission in the mesocorticolimbic projection,<ref group="note">The mesocorticolimbic projection is a group of dopamine pathways that connects the ventral tegmental area to the nucleus accumbens and prefrontal cortex.</ref> but activity in other dopaminergic pathways and hedonic hotspots (e.g., the ventral pallidum) also modulate incentive salience.<ref name="NAcc function" /><ref name="Incentive salience and motivation review" /><ref name="Pleasure system - incentive sensitization">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Clinical significance
Addiction
Template:Further The assignment of incentive salience to stimuli is dysregulated in addiction.<ref name="Motivational salience" /><ref name="Incentive salience and motivation review" /><ref name="Pleasure system - incentive sensitization" /><ref name="Reinforcement in addiction" /> Addictive drugs are intrinsically rewarding (not to be confused with pleasure) and therefore function as primary positive reinforcers of continued drug use that are assigned incentive salience.<ref name="Schultz" /><ref name="Incentive salience and motivation review" /><ref name="Pleasure system - incentive sensitization"/><ref name="Reinforcement in addiction">Template:Cite book</ref> During the development of an addiction, the repeated association of otherwise neutral and even non-rewarding stimuli with drug consumption triggers an associative learning process that causes these previously neutral stimuli to act as conditioned positive reinforcers of addictive drug use (i.e., these stimuli start to function as drug cues).<ref name="Incentive salience and motivation review" /><ref name="Pleasure system - incentive sensitization" /><ref name="Reinforcement in addiction" /> As conditioned positive reinforcers of drug use, these previously neutral stimuli are assigned incentive salience (which manifests as a craving) – sometimes at pathologically high levels due to reward sensitization – which can transfer to the primary reinforcer (e.g., the use of an addictive drug) with which it was originally paired.<ref name="Incentive salience and motivation review" /><ref name="Pleasure system - incentive sensitization" /><ref name="Reinforcement in addiction" /> Thus, if an individual remains abstinent from drug use for some time and encounters one of these drug cues, a craving for the associated drug may reappear. For example, anti-drug agencies previously used posters with images of drug paraphernalia as an attempt to show the dangers of drug use. However, such posters are no longer used because of the effects of incentive salience in causing relapse upon sight of the stimuli illustrated in the posters.Template:Citation needed
In addiction, the "liking" (pleasure or hedonic value) of a drug or other stimulus becomes dissociated from "wanting" (i.e., desire or craving) due to the sensitization of incentive salience.<ref>Berridge, K.C., Robinson, T.E. What is the role of dopamine in reward: hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive salience? Brain Res Brain Res Rev. 1998 Dec; 28(3):309–69.</ref> In fact, if the incentive salience associated with drug-taking becomes pathologically amplified, the user may want the drug more and more while liking it less and less as tolerance develops to the drug's pleasurable effects.<ref name="Pleasure system - incentive sensitization" />
Neuropsychopharmacology
Dopaminergic psychostimulants
Amphetamine improves task saliency (motivation to perform a task) and increases arousal (wakefulness), in turn promoting goal-directed behavior.<ref name="Malenka_2009" /><ref name="Malenka NAcc">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Continuum">Template:Cite journal</ref> The reinforcing and motivational salience-promoting effects of amphetamine are mostly due to enhanced dopaminergic activity in the mesolimbic pathway.<ref name="Malenka_2009">Template:Cite book</ref>