To allow us to survive, our brains monitor our physical and social needs, generate impulses to fulfill those needs, and regulate those impulses according to what Is appropriate for a given context. Ideally, we thrive when we can allow awareness of our impulses into consciousness, and also flexibly choose which to express or inhibit. In practice, however, we often find it hard to take the necessary risks to get those wants and needs met. Conversely, we often act on impulses that are impossible to resist, even though we intend otherwise. Psychoanalysis has had much to say about the fundamental processes underlying these dynamics, which include drives arising from need, ego and superego functions that mediate how we interact with reality to get those needs met, and the object relations that form the matrix for ego and superego functions. How does the brain mediate these processes?
This lecture will focus on some of the “bottom-up” brain circuits which are thought to mediate drive and motivation, including the hypothalamus, amygdala, basal ganglia, anterior insula, and orbitofrontal cortex, with some consideration of “ top-down” regulation, mediated by hippocampus, anterior cingulate, and ventromedial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. In particular we will walk through some of the proposed building blocks of cathexis or incentive salience – brain processes in which evolutionarily wired drive and SEEKING activity becomes connected to particular objects and cues in the environment.