Current perspectives on incentive salience and applications to clinical disorders

•‘Wanting’ (incentive salience) & ‘liking’ (hedonic impact) are components of reward.•Dopamine contributes to ‘wanting’ but not ‘liking.’•Hypoactivity in dopamine-related systems may produce blunted ‘wanting.’•Hyper-reactivity in sensitized dopamine-related systems may intensify ‘wanting’.•Dysregulated dopamine may also contribute in paranoid psychosis. Affective neuroscience research has revealed that reward contains separable components of ‘liking’, ‘wanting’, and learning. Here we focus on current ‘liking’ and ‘wanting’ findings and applications to clinical disorders. ‘Liking’ is the hedonic impact derived from a pleasant experience, and is amplified by opioid and related signals in discrete sites located in limbic-related brain areas. ‘Wanting’ refers to incentive salience, a motivation process for reward, and is mediated by larger systems involving mesocorticolimbic dopamine. Deficits in incentive salience may contribute to avolitional features of depression and related disorders, whereas deficits in hedonic impact may produce true anhedonia. Excesses in incentive salience, on the other hand, can lead to addiction, especially when narrowly focused on a particular target. Finally, a fearful form of motivational salience may even contribute to some paranoia symptoms of schizophrenia and related disorders.