Kent Berridge

Life

• Kent Berridge: Born in 1954; earned BA from Kalamazoo College (1976) and PhD from University of Pennsylvania (1981).
• Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at University of Michigan (since 1986).
• Director of the Affective Neuroscience & Biopsychology Lab.
• Recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from APA (2018).

People Who Influenced Their Thought

• Paul MacLean: Triune brain theory influenced his affective neuroscience approach.
• Jaak Panksepp: Collaborated on neural mechanisms of emotion.
• James Olds: Early brain stimulation work inspired reward system research.

Main Ideas and Publications

• Liking vs. Wanting Distinction: Proposed 1991, separating pleasure (opioid systems) from desire (dopamine systems).
• Incentive-Sensitization Theory: Published 1993, explaining addiction mechanisms.
• Affective Neuroscience of Consciousness: Linking subcortical systems to conscious experience.
• Over 200 publications on reward, emotion, and motivation (1980s-present).

Key People Influenced by Their Thought

• Terry Robinson: Longtime collaborator on addiction research.
• Morten Kringelbach: Applied liking/wanting distinction to human neuroscience.
• Wolfram Schultz: Complementary work on dopamine and reward prediction.

Conclusion

• Kent Berridge has fundamentally transformed our understanding of reward, emotion and motivation by dissecting their neural components and mechanisms.