Siri, Scan My Brain

When a person perceives pleasure say, a glimpse of a chocolate cake on a restaurant’s dessert menu, the ventral striatum experiences increased activity. The prefrontal cortex, which handles reasoning and rational thought, must override the drive and tell the server ‘just the check’ will be fine.

Researchers have used fMRI machines to present a participant with a potential reward, and then observe the prefrontal cortex activity as the person either opts to pursue pleasure or holds off. These scans have found distinct neural activity between control groups and people with obesity, alcoholism.