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hubie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Pain and reward are powerful motivators. Most often seen to have a yin-yang [utm.edu] relationship, they are often employed as the carrot-and-stick [wikipedia.org] to influence the behavior in a person. Because they are seen to have a complementary relationship, much of the research on brain imaging tended to investigate the pain and reward processing regions separately.

There are two dominant theories regarding the pain/pleasure interaction. The competition hypothesis proposes that when presented with a reward, this not only activates the reward-processing neurons in the brain, but also suppress the pain-processing neurons and vice versa. The second theory, the salience hypothesis, proposes that these neurons are not linked and that neuron activity depends upon the degree of motivation resulting from the pain or pleasure. Most research has investigated and supported the competition hypothesis.

A new paper [nature.com] by Cui et al., argues that there actually is good support for the salience hypothesis. They point out that most of the previous studies were cue-based, where a subject was presented with a cue that either pain or reward would be presented, thus allowing them time to weigh the trade-offs, and they argue this would pit the two neural regions against each other and thus preordain support the competition hypothesis. Cui et al. devised an experiment where combinations are presented, such as a reward being given when shown a picture of someone being inflicted by pain. Their results show good support for the salience hypothesis, but they point out that there could be different time scales involved between the two processing regions in the brain.

It is worth noting that the salience hypothesis and competition hypothesis are not antagonistic to each other. One possibility is that they are both true, but manifest in different temporal stages of processing. To our knowledge, the literature lacks high-temporal-resolution data that could directly address this possibility.

So if your boss gives you a raise, that is a good motivator for you, and if they fire your co-worker, that also could be a good motivator. However, if Cui et al. are correct, perhaps the best motivator for you is to give you a raise AND fire your co-worker.

Original Submission