This is your brain on pleasure (even the guilty kind)

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It’s likely you have at least one “guilty pleasure.” Maybe it’s romance novels. Or reality TV… Playing video games… or getting swept into obscure corners of TikTok . Neuroscientists say the pleasure response helps us survive as a species. So why do we feel embarrassed by some of the things we love the most? Even if you don't have these negative emotions, experiencing – and studying – pleasure is not as straightforward as it might seem. For a long time, neuroscientists thought the concept of "pleasure" referred to a singular system in the brain. But as research into the subject grew, scientists realized that pleasure is really a cycle of "wanting" and "liking" – each with separate neural…