Pleasure is central to our lives and intimately linked to emotional, cognitive and reward processing in the brain. In general, hedonic experience is arguably at the heart of what makes us human, but at the same time it is also one of the most important factors keeping us from staying healthy. Understanding the underlying brain mechanisms can therefore help us understand and potentially treat the serious problems of affective disorders.

Hedonia: Transnational Research Group is based both in the Department of Psychiatry, Oxford, and at CFIN, Aarhus University, Denmark. We use a range of behavioural, neuroimaging, neurosurgical and computational methods to investigate the many facets of pleasure in health and disease. Following the lead from Aristotle, we are interested in the fundamental pleasures afforded by food, sex and social interactions, which are central to survival, but we are also interested in higher order pleasures such as music and art which are strongly linked to eudaimonia, the meaningful and engaging life. In particular, we are investigating the neural mechanisms of music as part of the Music in the Brain centre at Aarhus University, funded by the Danish National Research Foundation. We are also elucidating the fundamental brain mechanisms of taste and smell in the Flavour Institute.

Infants are a focus of our research and especially how their sounds, looks and smells strongly influence the adult brain. The ERC is funding our research to better understand the development of the parent-infant relationship which may also help to shape the way we can intervene when things go awry, e.g. in sleep deprivation or post-natal depression. Empathy plays a key part in this deeply meaningful relationship which we are helping finding new ways of exploring in the world’s first Empathy Museum.

Another main focus is understanding and modelling how pleasure systems are fundamental in the dynamic allocation of brain resources. As we have come to understand more of the delicate balance and transitions between different brain states, we can now directly rebalance and recalibrate brain networks through deep brain stimulation. Together with Prof Gustavo Deco at UPF in Barcelona, we are building whole-brain computational models that allow us further probe and understand the human brain in health and disease.

When pleasure systems become unbalanced, it can be very difficult to rebalance the brain. One of our main interests is to help advance our understanding of the effects of war and disaster for which we have setup Scars of War Foundation at The Queen’s College. One current project is investigating the brain changes related to post-traumatic stress-disorder in war veterans.

Overall, the time is now ripe for modern neuroscience to study the many faces of hedonia and eudaimonia, opening up for new treatments and perhaps even better lives.