Posted on: Monday, May 17, 2004

Rewards are sweeter if earned, study finds

By Daniel Yee
Associated Press

ATLANTA — It's nicer when you actually earn it.

Lottery winners and others who get their money without working do not get as much satisfaction from their cash as those who earn it, suggests a study of the pleasure center in the brain.

Emory University scientists measured brain activity in the striatum, the part associated with reward processing and pleasure, in two groups of volunteers. One group had to work to receive money while playing a

simple computer game; the other group was rewarded without having to earn it.

The brains of those who had to work for their money were more stimulated.

Gregory Berns, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral science, said other studies have shown "substantial evidence that people who win the lottery are not happier a year after they win the lottery."

In the study, published recently in the journal Neuron, 16 volunteers played a computer game while their brains were scanned by magnetic resonance imaging.

The researchers found that some reward centers of the brain were activated whenever a volunteer received money. But the striatum was activated only when they worked for their reward.

Berns suggested that the brain is wired this way.

"I don't think it ever evolved to sit back and sit on the couch and have things fall in our laps," he said.

The study was paid for by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.