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Discovery: Exchanges At The Frontier: Episode 5 - Morten Kringelbach

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Science & Nature

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AC Grayling discusses the neuroscience of pleasure with psychologist Morten Kringelbach.

How does pleasure lead to happiness? AC Grayling talks to a Morten Kringelbach, a neuroscientist exploring how the brain processes pleasure and what happens when things go wrong.

Morten L Kringelbach is Professor of Neuroscience at Aarhus University in Denmark and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, specialising in the neuroscience of pleasure. 

Pleasure he believes, is central to our lives and intimately linked to emotional, cognitive and reward processing in the brain. 

It is crucial in making us human and keeping us healthy. 

Understanding exactly how pleasure leads to happiness could revolutionise the experience of life for all of us. 

He is leading research into the fundamental neural mechanisms underlying human sensory and social pleasures in order to develop new ways to treat affective disorders. 

His collaborations with neurosurgeons and explorations of the underlying brain mechanisms involved in pleasure have lead to his involvement in complex interventions such as Deep Brain Stimulation and he believes his research can help us treat the serious problems of mood disorders such as depression and personality disorder.

(Image: A couple in bed. Credit: Science Photo Library)

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BBC World Service

Discovery: Exchanges At The Frontier

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Exchanges At The Frontier

A second series of public events on the role of science in society, from the BBC World Service with the Wellcome Collection.

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Episode 5 - Morten Kringelbach

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